No one ever said it would be This Hard
by RealForUs
Summary: Those who love you remember your beauty when you feel ugly, your wholeness when you are broken and your innocence when you feel guilty. S4 AU. Banna
1. Chapter 1

**[No one ever said it would be] This Hard**

 **Trigger Warning: Most things! Please proceed with caution if you find any themes triggering. I will include specific trigger warnings for each chapter but to be more explicit at the start would be too spoilery. For this chapter: Immediate aftermath of rape, implied references to child abuse, mentions of suicidal thoughts...**

 _A/N: I finally got up the courage to post this. I hope it will be well-received. I was initially unwilling to post until I'd finished writing it, but I know exactly where I'm going with it and I feel that feedback from the fandom will motivate me to keep writing it – so here we go. This is a fic that I have been writing for a very long time and it deals with the events of Series 4 Episode 3 and 4 in more depth than the show did, before diverging quite drastically from canon in order to explore an alternative direction that the storyline could have taken._

 _Like many in this beautiful fandom, I had very mixed feelings about Series 4. On the one hand I thought it was a brave decision to address a vitally important and horrifying issue that is too often ignored in the media. I felt that Joanne Froggatt (and Brendan Coyle and the others) handled the plotline with insight, empathy and an extreme emotional connection to what they were depicting (the proof of this is in the overwhelming response Jo Fro received from survivors who valued her understanding representation of their experiences and felt that she had publically validated what they and others had been through)._

 _However, I am of the opinion that Fellowes himself grossly mishandled the storyline. Although I can find many harsh truths about and reflections of society in the way in which after the events downstairs in Episode 3 the show cut back to the aristocratic gambling going on upstairs, I have a sinking certainty that this was not Fellowes' intention and he actually misguidedly believed that anyone still cared about anything else happening in that episode that did not revolve solely around the atrocity we had just borne shell-shocked witness too._

 _I hated that the events with Tom and Edna occurred in the same episode, as the contrast between two very different types of sexual assault seemed to me to inadvertently undermine, to some extent, the fact that what happened to him was also not consensual, while simultaneously once again taking the focus off Anna._

 _I also detested how Mrs Hughes (who, don't get me wrong, I adore and have huge admiration for – and I understand that she was under a lot of pressure and handling numerous very different and extremely difficult, distressing situations, which she had no precedent for how to manage, as best she could; nonetheless….) dealt with Edna in the subsequent episode. I don't know if it struck anyone else, but the way in which she threatened her (please check the episode if you don't know what I mean) – which would have been shocking at any time – was horrifyingly callous in light of what had just happened to Anna. I also detested (and the more I think about it the more strongly I feel) that she told John what had happened. I know that she acted with Anna's best interests at heart, I know that she had to make a judgement call in a bleak situation and chose what she thought to be the lesser of two evils, I don't blame her really, but_ _ **she took away Anna's contro**_ _l: Anna's right to choose what to tell the person she loved most and if and when to do so. John would never have left really – Mrs Hughes would only have had to tell him the first bit of what she said (that Anna loved him very much and to come home and find him gone might finish her) and he would have stayed without question._

 _Most of all – and this does not seem to be a commonly held opinion, so I will explain my reasoning – I loathed that Green died. Because it seemed to me like Fellowes backing out of his own challenging, important storyline. It was a convenient solution that enabled him to distract us all with another murder mystery and apparently alleviate himself of the responsibility of tackling the long-term psychological implications of what had happened or dealing with the painful mess of healing. It confirmed my belief that, however much Jo Fro and Brendan's acting redeemed this, he had used rape as a 'dramatic' plot device. And finally, it made it about Green not Anna. It shifted the focus onto the wrong person and it wasn't fair._

 _The point of this fic is to address these issues, especially to develop the impacts Episode 3 had on Anna and John, and also to look at a 'what if' scenario that has bothered me for ages. I am not, by any means, the first person to write a fic like this. Mine will certainly not be as good as others I have read. I have read everything I can about Banna (especially fics that focus on post Episode 3 stuff) so if you recognise something from somewhere else or you think I have stolen something from one of your fics: I am so sorry! It is not intentional. Please be flattered that I was affected so much by your writing that it inspired me subconsciously. :)_

 _I am writing about a sensitive subject matter of which I have absolutely no personal experience. I have done a huge amount of research and desperately want to handle this with the respect and compassion it needs and deserves. If you have any more understanding than me or feel I have misrepresented something or glossed over some aspect, please let me know._

 _I started writing this a while ago now so I apologise if the quality of some of what I've written is not great. I don't edit because I feel it loses its rawness and becomes too contrived._

 _I am so sorry for the outrageously long A/N, it will never happen again, I promise. This will be multi-chaptered and a prequel is in the works._

 _This fic is dedicated to: Elizabeth's Echo as a thanks for her endless patience with my mad ranting about this fic which she has endured for months without complaint; James Luver, because they are probably one of my favourite writers ever and made my New Year by reviewing one of my fics; silly-beggar because they always leave such kind, encouraging reviews and contribute wonderful things to the Banna fandom; me-and-mister-bates, my lovely lovely beta for the prequel to this, for putting up with my inability to stick to anything like a schedule and being so kind and encouraging; and anyone who identifies with anything in this fic._

 **Chapter 1 – When you lose something you can't replace**

 ** _'_** ** _Tears stream down your face, when you lose something you cannot replace…'_**

Anna tried to slip out of Mrs Hughes' sitting room as discretely as possible but she was still trembling so hard that her legs barely supported her. When John suddenly appeared in front of her they almost gave way and she only managed to steady herself by desperately grabbing the wall behind her.

"What happened to you?!" The shock was evident in his voice and Anna fleetingly glanced up into his bewildered, concerned face, before dropping her eyes again; the knot of nausea twisting ever tighter in her stomach as she struggled to compose herself enough to lie to him. He would see through her instantly. There was no hope of convincing anyone of anything while still in such a state…least of all John; because however much he trusted her, he also knew her – he could read her more easily than one of his battered books – and he could sense intuitively both when she was lying and when she was hurt; and right now she was both, in the extreme…But she _couldn't_ tell him what had happened.

"I was drinking a powder…when I suddenly felt dizzy. I must have fainted. I think I hit my head on the edge of the sink on the way down…'s stupid…" The words stuck in her throat and not only did her voice shake, it was so small as to be almost a whimper.

Risking another glance, Anna saw that John looked both slightly doubtful and, if anything, more worried.

"You've changed your dress…?" He observed anxiously. Trust John to notice – what other man would have realised that one black dress had been exchanged for another? She cursed his keen, valet's perceptiveness.

"Yes…it's badly marked…" _Don't think about it don't think about it don't_ "I've put it into soak, but I'm not sure I can save it…Mrs Hughes lent me this." Anna stammered – stumbling hopelessly over the words.

John looked as though he was about to say something else, when suddenly a horrendously familiar voice called out to them from the other end of the corridor. Anna shrank back into the hopeless lack of shadows, back hitting the wall as her breathing hitched. As her body fought not to retch at the wave of terror and revulsion swelling like bile, the shaking, that had not yet abated, intensified. John hadn't noticed, turning to the sound of _his_ voice.

"Goodnight Mr. Bates, _Mrs Bates;_ and thank you, for looking after me while I've been here." Was it only Anna's twisted fancy that there was mocking in _his_ voice when _he_ uttered her name? John seemed to notice nothing specifically untoward.

"Goodnight Mr. Gillingham," he replied tersely, turning back to Anna expectantly. His eyes widened at the sight of her poorly disguised cowering. Grappling to get it together – battling to not let the scant remnants of a semblance of composure slip away – Anna choked out "Goodnight Mr. Gillingham." She seemed to have swallowed her tongue.

She didn't dare look up lest she caught sight of _him_ – certain it would topple her irretrievably into the depths of the chasm she was teetering so precariously on the edge of, keeping her footing only through refusing to acknowledge the drop…like one of those dreams when she was flying and it was only when she remembered she couldn't fly that she started falling...

Anna _couldn't_ look at the smug, arrogant, self-satisfied smirk on _his_ face – the one that teased and mocked and twisted without warning into something ugly and vicious - again; nor see those dark, hard eyes, lit with that feral predatory hunger, roving possessively over her body as though it were prey…

John reached out to caress her face gently, obviously anxious and alarmed by her strange behaviour; but an explosion of molten panic scorched through Anna's veins like venom at the tender gesture, because suddenly the man she trusted and loved more than anyone on earth was gone and all she could see and feel was _him;_ and she flinched away violently, stumbling backwards – shuddering involuntarily as blind panic clouded her vision at the feeling of _hair being yanked and body being dragged like a ragdoll and dress being ripped open and the smell of whiskey, sweat, her own fear, acrid in her mouth -_

The metal corner digging into the backs of her legs brought John back into focus. She had backed up into the coat rack. Her body wasn't being touched; skull throbbing but hair restored; this dress intact. The smell remained, a sour taste heavy in her mouth. Mrs Hughes had given her soap; but the stench of _him_ coated her skin, in the pores, seeped into her blood, burned her eyes.

Realising how suspicious and off the stumble must have seemed, she attempted to cover it up with what was intended as a smile – but emerged as more of a tiny silent sob.

John, looking horrified at the possibility that he'd upset her – that he'd scared her – asked urgently, "What's the matter?"

"Nothing." Feeble lie, her voice high and wobbly even in her own ears.

This clearly hadn't assuaged his concern. He looked frantic. Anna ducked her head – unable to look at him anymore; not with his eyes full of fear and confusion and the softness he reserved only for her, none of which she deserved now.

She was tugging down a skirt that was even longer than her usual one. It must look, at best, peculiar, at worst, suspicious. She forced her hands to still.

Lifting her coat down, Anna shrugged it on, grateful for the added layer of protection – the extra line of defence. It made her feel marginally less vulnerable and exposed. With relief, she realised her hat now shadowed her face, making it less likely that John would notice the tears starting again. Despite her best efforts to bite them back and keep it locked behind her tightly pressed lips, they welled irrepressibly in her eyes. Boiling droplets of brine trickled down her cheeks, scalding trails leaving brands of shame and pain etched across the puffy, bruised skin of her face.

John was still looking at her expectantly – appearing thoroughly disconcerted – waiting for her to elaborate on the pathetic answer she had given.

"I just feel like walking on my own, that's all." She struggled for the words that fell as blatantly hollow untruths on her own ears; then drew away, seeking the comparative seclusion offered to her by the shadows as a sob rose inside her, pressing against her windpipe and aching in her jaw, closing up her throat so that she felt she would choke.

Gagging on the effort it took not to release the sound, Anna fumbled with the door handle and wrenched it open, her wrist, which was ringed with stark purpling bruises she had been forced to pull her sleeve over, protesting the strain. She stumbled clumsily outside into the cold night air, her legs weak and shaky under her, blinded by the haze of tears obscuring her vision. The chill seemed unseasonable but echoed the clamminess clutching at Anna's insides, where it felt like there was cold sweat accumulating under her skin. The bitterness froze the tears now coursing unstoppably down her cheeks and with every step pain jarred harshly through her body: jagged stabbing in her ribs where several had probably broken; her head pounding with the same headache that had caused all…this…the horror of tonight…now hugely heightened by crying and the loud white pain radiating from where _he_ had smashed her skull against the table to subdue her – _Don't think about it don't think about it._ Every inch of her battered frame ached dully; and all of that was nothing compared to _down there,_ where she knew with sick certainty something had torn. There was blood - dry and sticky – against the inside of her thigh, staining the borrowed under garments Mrs Hughes had found for her. Anna swallowed a wave of roiling nausea.

She heard the door open behind her and John calling her name, but did not look around. She was weeping hopelessly, but the silent tears somehow wouldn't escalate into sobs – refusing to relieve the intense pressure constricting her airways. She stumbled onwards into the enveloping darkness, compulsively clutching her stomach as though she could force what had happened away from her body, out from inside her, by the sheer pressure being exerted.

This was an awful mistake. Even her own touch was terrifying. Rationally, Anna was aware of the feel of the fabric of the borrowed dress under her own fingers, but her subconscious flared into utter panic at the mere sensation of physical contact. On some level, she was aware that she was starting to hyperventilate, but she was still unable to do anything to regain control of her body. The bitter taste of helplessness flooded her nose and mouth like water filling the lungs of someone drowning and it was only with supreme force of will that she didn't retch.

Staggering onwards, she sagged against a tree, fighting to convince her lungs to continue to take in oxygen. She succeeded only because her involuntary physical reaction was overridden by the terrifying prospect of losing consciousness alone in the smothering darkness of rural Yorkshire.

Anna continued leaning against the broad trunk of the tree – which was all that was holding her upright – even after her respiratory system had fallen back into a more normal pattern. The abrasive bark should have been acutely painful digging into her battered body, but Anna was only half-aware of the physical discomfort. Ripping from beneath her ribs and down through the aching bones of her face and upwards from all the places _he_ should never have been, a raw scream forced her mouth open. Her knuckles pressed against her teeth but there was no need for the muffling attempt – her cry emerged totally silent…and after all, no one would have heard her either way.

If she did not move soon then John would be along and find her like this. She forced her legs, in which the muscle and bone and tendons had been replaced with aching shaking water, to take her weight and continued to struggled back towards the cottage.

She hesitated on the threshold – her key in the lock, agonising pointlessly over entering. The second she did so their sanctuary would be contaminated – as she was – by the events of tonight. She didn't want to taint their beloved home with the poison that had taken root in the churning pit of her stomach, spreading tendrils of terror and revulsion and burning shame throughout her body. It had been her safe-place and, until she opened the door, it was almost possible to pretend to herself that that could remain unchanged; that in their home she could wake up from the nightmare.

Harsh practicalities turned the key and pulled her across the threshold into the threateningly shadowy sitting room, where she scrabbled in the darkness for the matches they kept on the mantelpiece. Her breathing once again climbed into her mouth and stayed there, refusing to return to her lungs and ripped ragged by the teeth digging into her lip, as she struggled to find them and then to light one. The gentle glow of gaslight when she succeeded illuminated enough of the room to momentarily allow a shaky exhale, before noticing that it had also thrown into stark relief the marks on her wrist which the sleeve of the borrowed dress had fallen back to reveal. Bruises form where crushingly strong hands had tightened ruthlessly around her fragile wrists and yanked her arms up over her head – _so she couldn't fight or cover herself or get away_ –

Anna only just made it to the sink in the adjoining kitchen in time to throw up. She had brought up the contents of her stomach earlier that night in Mrs Hughes' waste paper basket, doubled over and wracked with sobs in between heaves – crying until she was sick as illness had never made her, gagging on visceral terror and shock; so that now all her body expelled was acidic bile, burning her throat as her empty guts continued to vomit nothing. The violent convulsions made her ribs throb with the remembered pain of being thrown against a table.

When it was over her knees gave out, bringing her crashing down onto the cold flagstoned floor of the little kitchen. In that moment, crumpled and drained in a pathetic heap on the floor, knees on fire and heels of her hands smarting as pain jarred up her wrists, Anna wanted to die; to die and not have to feel anything anymore ever again. Weren't people supposed to feel numb or shutdown or something after…things like this? She envied them, if that was the case. She would have given almost anything, certainly not excluding her life, to feel nothing. It was a cowardly thought and she loathed herself for even allowing it to cross her mind.

She had not wished to die even when John was sentenced because, although it was impossible to fathom living without him, she had been sustained by the fire of determination burning in her bones: the need to prove that he was innocent so that, even if they really did go ahead with the worst, the world would be left in no doubt about John Bates' character. That alone had kept her going, whole soul fired up with rage and devoted conviction but now…now she felt much as she had at the age of twelve – alone and locked inside herself in Liverpool… now she was hollow and devoid of any of her usual persistent will to fight. Her life had been smashed into adversity so many times and she had dragged herself through it so many times but what if this was the breaking point? Earlier, when _he_ had been… _don't think about it don't think don't –_ At one point she had truly thought _he_ would kill her – and the most terrifying thing was that didn't scare her; by that point she wished _he_ would, wished to die rather than live through what _he_ was doing. Of course, _he_ had had no such mercy and had left, ripping away her soul but not her life; taking all of Anna Bates and leaving behind nothing more than the irrevocably tainted shell of the stricken child whose surname was Smith and who Anna should have known was all she would ever be.

She had thought she had blocked out that part of her life, locking it away in the darkest recesses of her mind, a cellar under the self she had rebuilt, the life she had painstakingly crafted and cherished so much – a life that now lay desecrated in ruins around her. Now her past and present seemed to have fused into one horrifying mess that the ex-housemaid could see no way to clean up. She had been razed to the ground in a matter of minutes; and was beyond even tears now.

Suddenly an image burst into Anna's mind – as razor sharp as if a photograph had been pasted to the inside of her eyelids. John.

She had not died and therefore she could not. To kill herself would be unthinkably selfish. She knew what it had felt like to think John would die, that she would lose him; the memory of the feeling - like someone had removed her internal organs and filled the space with shards of glass dipped in poison – still woke her up sobbing wrenchingly in the night sometimes. She would not put John through that.

Nothing could be the same between them though – not ever again. She was soiled – dirty and spoiled – and she mustn't risk contaminating John by letting him near her. The idea of having him touch her was terrifying now; she couldn't bear it…But she had seen the look in his eyes earlier when she had flinched away: the devastation and shock that she had reacted as though expecting violence, aghast that she could ever imagine he would hurt her. Anna knew – of course she knew – that John would rather die than harm her; but it wasn't as simple as that. _He_ seemed to have violated her mind too, so that all her subconscious understood how to react with was panic and fear. Touch was horrifying and inevitably brought pain and shame: this was a lesson that Anna had learnt as a little girl. It was one she had managed to unlearn in adult life, but now she had been brutally reminded. She hated this – hated that something which happened twenty-five years ago and mere minutes spent at the mercy of a stranger, were outweighing ten years of mutual trust, care and overwhelming love between her and John – but the fact remained: Anna was scared.

That look in his eyes when she cringed from his touch: a searing combination of bewildered hurt and boiling self-hatred and doubt, she was to blame for it. She hated lying to him– not least because he could see through her so easily that he knew he was being lied to. Apparently, however, she was not so transparent that he could read the truth. A part of her almost wished he could – No! If John knew what _that man_ had done, he would kill _him_. And then they would hang him. Anna couldn't let that happen and if he ever found out it was surely the only possible outcome; she knew her John too well. _Not my John, anymore,_ she mentally corrected herself. To keep him safe, he could never be 'her John' again. She would have to tell lie after lie – and he would know they were lies. Her filthy, shameful secret would tear them apart and he could never know why. It would break his heart. She would break his heart. Secrets and lies – wasn't that just like Vera? She would be doing to him what Vera had…she didn't know what to do…

Anna shook herself – literally – and the pain pulled her back just enough from the brink. With sheer force of will she marshalled her thoughts. She had to pull herself together in order to put up a front of normality for John, at least for now – until she worked out how to proceed – and she couldn't do that with her cheek pressed against the floor. She willed herself to stand up. The only problem was that her throbbing body, in the time spent lying on the chilled flagstones, seemed to have been filled with cold burning lead. Gritting her teeth against the jolting pain, Anna gave her body basic commands: _Sit up. Stand up. Rinse out the sink. For John. For John. For John._ She would lie and deceive and break his heart but it would be to protect him – all she had ever wanted to do was protect him, save him – her husband who had suffered so much. Better a broken heart than a broken neck. That would be her mantra when perpetuating this deception became unbearable. She would endure anything to save John from the repercussions, and even the simple knowledge, of her failure as a wife and a woman, of the way she had betrayed him and their vows…

Struggling with the tap as she swilled away the bile in the deep basin, Anna realised for the first time since rushing into the room that the kitchen was dark. The half-light by which she was performing the grim task came from the moon, streaming through the tiny window. It made her hands look ghostly – almost wraith like. It seemed bitterly appropriate.

The beauty and perfection and wholeness of the pure glow, a constant suspended in mid-flight, waiting patiently in the darkness, seemed to mock Anna, but she was grateful for its presence nonetheless. A desperate fear of the dark, which had haunted her childhood with the monsters that came at night, was prickling through her muscles. It had taken many years into her service at Downton, and the support of a bemused Gwen, before Anna could fall asleep without a light source and even now she preferred to make love with John with the lamps lit. A preference he never mentioned despite the fact that she never offered an explanation for her insistence. Anna had been deeply relieved to all but get over her crippling, debilitating fear in the last decade and a half, but it seemed that it had now returned full force. Furious with herself, she clamped her lips together and pressed the childish impulse to cry back down into her stomach.

Flinging the door, that had slammed behind her initial dash, open Anna allowed the light from the gas lamps she had lit in the other room to flood blindingly into the gloomy little kitchen-cum-scullery. Instead of releasing the tension in her body that was the only thing preventing her dissolving into a scared little girl, her eyes slammed reflexively shut. It didn't matter that the would-be calming ambience of flickering gas light was nothing like the glare of electricity, _he was there, hauling her about and holding her down, forced onto the table beneath the bare electric bulb, his hands ripping her skirt, scratching her delicate flesh, hers scrabbling frantically, uselessly, for a purchase on the smooth table, raking her nails across his hand, the answering blow, the echoing finality of the door he had ripped open slamming shut, the echoing helplessness of her own unanswered screams…_ She surfaced gasping.

She was scared of the dark. She was scared of the light. She was so scared.

Digging her ragged fingernails into her palms until she felt herself draw blood, Anna wanted John. She ached to be held and comforted and just for a moment to let him take it all away and make her feel safe. But she didn't deserve comfort – she had made this happen. Somehow she had done something that had made _him_ think she wanted this. It was her fault. She wasn't worthy of John. Not now. Besides, the thought of being touched made her feel physically sick with paralysing terror.

John could come home any time now and she needed to have some sort of façade in place. She also needed to dispel any delusions he may have that she was upset with him. The purpose, the achievable tasks, focused her mind and muffled the roar of her own pulse in her head, the pounding of her guilt.

Really the fire needed stoking, but the coal scuttle was nearly empty and the prospect of leaving the cottage to refill it was beyond her. So she merely relit the remaining lump of coal and heap of cinders from the previous night, to drive out the unseasonable chill that she was fairly sure had settled in the air and not only through her bones. Bending to coax the fire into life hurt. She ignored it. Dragging herself up the narrow staircase with a kettle of water for the washstand, that should at least still be warm by the time John used it, Anna was convinced she would fall. In some ways heightening the physical pain to the point where it blurred her vision was a relief – it anchored her to the present.

Her limbs were shaking by the time she stumbled half-blindly back downstairs again, needing to get herself ready for at least a pretense of going to sleep before John got home. A part of Anna craved a bath: the chance to let her screaming muscles unwind and maybe attempt to get the stench of _him_ – like a signature of ownership on her skin, the fingerprints of a thief – off her. But another, far more dominant part of her never wanted to remove the illusion of security her layers of clothing provided ever again; she still hadn't taken her coat off. Also the possibility of John returning before she was finished could not be risked. She would never be able to convince him of her already weak lie about what had happened if he witnessed the state of her battered body – something she was unsure she could handle seeing either.

With that in mind, she quickly splashed cold water onto her face, which felt tender and sore under her fingers, while trying hard to avoid catching a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror that hung over the kitchen sink. Needing the security of a closed door, she retreated upstairs to their bedroom. Gathering herself for a second, she pressed her slightly feverish forehead against the cool wood of the door. Her heart was thudding madly in her chest and her breathing was ragged as she ruthlessly forced herself to change. Still trying not to be sick yet again, she clumsily fumbled to do up the top button of her thickest winter nightgown, totally gratuitous for the time of year, with shaking fingers. Anna felt limp and drained and so very, very tired.

Staring at their bed, she bit her lip and tasted rust. She couldn't mar their marital bed with her dirtiness – couldn't bring _him_ into the place where her and John made clumsy, passionate love after the mutual frustration of a long day of chaste touches and subtle looks; or moved gently together, bathed in the dawn, when they should have already begun the journey to the Abbey. Had made. Had moved.

She needed to be calm enough to be convincingly feigning sleep by the time he came home. John's neck was more important than the fanciful sanctity of their shared bed. She heard his key turning in the lock not five minutes after huddling under blankets she had no right to touch, and realised with a jolt, too late, that her paranoid locking of the front door before coming upstairs would only have added to his suspicion.

He called her name a couple of times and it took all her self-restraint to bite her tongue and not respond – hoping he would believe she was asleep. Anna lay very still, listening to the reassuring, painfully normal sounds of him pottering around downstairs, going through the ordinary rituals of his nightly routine. He came into the room and she stiffened, trying with all her might to slow her breathing as he took off his starched and uncomfortable uniform, hanging it carefully over the back of the chair – as usual. The light of the candle he had brought upstairs to illuminate his tasks flickered in front of her screwed up eyelids as she squeezed her stinging eyes more tightly shut – willing herself not to visibly panic as he slid quietly into bed next to her, easing the covers back as little as possible in his effort not to wake her.

Feeling his warm weight on the mattress next to her, Anna desired nothing more than to be able to break down and confess everything and let his soothing presence wash away all her shame and pain and fear. The emotional agony was so sharp it was physical, a stabbing weight in her lungs. She clenched her fists so that her nails dug into the grooves they had made in her palms earlier in the evening and prayed to a god she was no longer sure she believed in to make her strong enough to bear this for John.

Anna was rigid in the bed next to him, but he could feel her suppressed shivering through the tremors it caused in the mattress. It wasn't that cold – was this symptomatic of her being ill, as she had professed to feeling earlier?

Tentatively, mindful of how badly she had reacted last time, he gently reached out with the intention of stroking her hair comfortingly. It was something that usually soothed her when she was unwell or upset.

She flinched from his touch. Her suppressed whimper – of pain or fear, he wasn't sure – cut him like a knife. "Anna?" She didn't respond. Did not, by word or gesture, give any indication she had heard him at all. She was cringing at the very edge of the mattress – cringing away from him? – and seemed to be trying to make herself as small as possible. John could sense her trembling.

"Anna" he tried one more time – acutely aware that she was awake – but then cut himself off. If she needed him to pretend that she was asleep – in spite of what had just occurred – then he would do so. John didn't understand what had happened, but he knew something was wrong – very wrong indeed. He was scared and confused by the sudden change wrought in his wife and desperately needed an explanation, but Anna had to be the priority. Everything else could wait; he would do whatever was need to make her feel better, more comfortable. And if, at this moment, that was playing along with her pretense, that was what he would do.

He blew out the candle and, lying far enough away from Anna that there was no chance of them accidentally touching and eliciting that kind of distressed reaction from her again, but facing her so that she knew she was welcome to come to him at any point if she wanted to, he whispered tenderly "Goodnight my darling. I love you." And then added, asserting his devotion - feeling she needed the reassurance, "However, whatever, whenever."

They lay there in the pitch darkness for several moments before he noticed the catch in her breathing. An iron fist clenched around John's heart. Anna was crying. Crying silently, trying to stifle it in the pillow, but lying next to him shuddering with sobs. His resolve to go along with her attempt to pretend she was asleep weakened as his concern heightened. Anna had not, to his knowledge, cried since the night Mr. Matthew died.

Something terrible had happened to her. Something that she apparently felt unable to tell him about, that had caused her such distress it had brought her to tears. The mere thought of something upsetting strong, resilient, brave, bright, beautiful, unfailingly optimistic Anna made John feel sick with the pain in his heart.

"Anna- "he tried again, whispering into the darkness that surrounded them: trying to reach her. There was no response save for an increase in the tension her locked muscles seemed to radiate. Scared to make things worse and at a loss for how to help, John simply reiterated, "I love you."

He lay there in the smothering blackness for what felt like hours – enduring the unbearable sound of Anna's muffled weeping and dwelling endlessly, fruitlessly on the question chasing itself around his brain. What could possibly have happened to cause this? Eventually physical exhaustion won out and he dropped into a fitful slumber.

Anna's frame continued to shudder with the echoes of sobs long after her tear ducts had run dry. John had lain next to her in wakeful silence for hours – the tension between them so thick it would have taken a carving knife to slice it. When at last his breathing evened out, becoming slow and deep, the familiar sound brought with it a strange mixture of relief at the dissipating tension and an aching loneliness and isolation. She was lying so near to her husband that she could have reached out and touched him, had she dared, but the distance between them had never been greater. When he was in prison she had felt closer to him than this.

This – what _he_ had done – had taken the truth from between them. That was perhaps the worst thing of all: lying to John. It was only going to get harder too – she knew that. Every second of their life, from now and as far as into the future as she could see, there would be falsehoods between them and it was entirely her fault. It would be to protect him – only ever to protect him – but that didn't prevent the suffocating self-hatred that came with not being honest with John. At the back of her mind, a niggling voice persisted in whispering that she was just like Vera. After all, this was why John's first marriage had broken down. Vera had been unfaithful – been with another man – and the lies had sprung up between them to maintain her secrets…

Unable to stand it, Anna scrambled out of bed and fled the room – almost tripping on the stairs in her haste; needing to get away from John so that she did not risk marking him with the filth she would never be free of – a taint fouler than the Manchester streets of her childhood, coating her skin and running through her blood, matting her hair and spilling from her eyes.

Curled up in the chair he favoured, a poor substitute for his arms, wishing that if she made her ruined shell of a body small enough she could disappear entirely, Anna stared at the dying embers in the grate. Randomly, she regretted that she had read such a lot of the poetry John loved so much, because the dwindling fire now seemed to symbolise the wreckage of her life as it flickered and went out – guttering like the 'brief candle' in Macbeth and leaving only ashes in its wake.

With her arms wrapped around her knees, shivering with the cold in her bones and failing to comfort herself with her own embrace, Anna sat huddled in John's chair all night. Her red-rimmed eyes were swollen but dry with staring unseeingly. Now she had no more tears. Her face must be blotchy and was still throbbing from _his_ blows. Her mouth tasted sour, scalp still tender and smarting where _he_ had yanked clumps of her hair. Staring at her white-knuckled hands, Anna noticed for the first time that how her nails were ragged and bloody. Trying very hard not to think about why, she remained, counting the minutes until she could reasonably distract herself with physical labour and hopefully numbing menial tasks.

Anna breathed shallowly through her mouth – hating that the comforting, heartbreakingly familiar scent of John: peppermint, pomade, mothballs, old books and strong tea, was spoiled by both the stench of _him_ that still cloyed to her clammy skin and the undertones of boot polish in John's smell – but too bone weary to move from her refuge.

 _If people want me to, I will aim to post Chapter 2 next week._


	2. Chapter 2

**Trigger Warning for this chapter: Aftermath of rape, character being triggered, flashbacks, internalised victim blaming. Please take care of yourselves!**

 _A/N: I was overwhelmed by the kind, supportive reviews I received for the first chapter. Thank you all so much for your lovely words – I was so worried about posting this story and insecure about my writing and the positive response from this wonderful fandom has given me a lot more confidence. I hope this chapter does not disappoint; it is the last one that follows canon – chapter 3 will diverge from what happened on the show._

 **Chapter 2 – Going through the motions**

 ** _'_** ** _A rape victim and a victim of a fatal accident were both gone forever. The difference was that the rape victim still had to go through the motions of being alive.'_**

John awoke slowly with dull worry lining his lungs, weighing them down with a vague sense of unease. Reaching sleepily across the bed his clumsy fingers closed on empty space. Anna's side of the bed was cold and there was no lingering impression of where her body had been. She had not just got up, the echo of her would remain if she had; she had not slept there at all. The sharp pressure of the concern and confusion of the previous night returned full force – like a blunt weapon digging into his sternum. The memory of Anna flinching from his touch, her silence, of falling into restless sleep to the sound of her attempts to conceal her weeping – with no idea what was wrong or how to help her – drove John abruptly to his feet.

"Anna?"

No response. The sound of shrill birds outside the window, irritating rather than endearing given his simmering anxiety, but no sounds of Anna – not the tap running nor the sound of her bustling about the kitchen. Sometimes, on the rare occasions she woke up before him, she would make a pot of tea and he would come down to find her still in her nightdress and curled contentedly on a chair near the window – her legs drawn up under her like a cat's or a little girl's and the dawn sunlight dancing lazily across sleep-messed blonde hair. He would remind her that tea in the mornings was his job – their routine was that he did it before work, to let Anna, not naturally an early-riser, have as much of a lie-in as life in service would allow, and she did it when they got home and his leg was stiff and protesting the day spent on it – and she would raise her eyebrows and point at his teacup and she would taste of tea flavoured laughter when he leant down to kiss her…

The kitchen was empty. Checking the clock by the gloomy half-light of dawn he winced at how early it was – half an hour before they would usually even wake-up. Anna had left - without him. In all the years they had lived in the cottage, there had never been a day when they had not walked to and from the Abbey together but now, in the space of six hours she had made both journeys alone. John looked forward to the precious fifteen minutes of peace snatched at either end of the relentlessly long day, cherishing the time alone with Anna, and he knew – or thought he knew – that she valued it too. Now she was obviously trying to avoid him. What had he done?

He shouldn't have snapped at her yesterday – he had regretted it as soon as he had raised his voice, barking at her like that. It hadn't been her he was angry with; Green grated harshly on him, getting under his skin and making it crawl unpleasantly. He didn't know what it was about the other valet that prickled him with distrust; there was nothing specific, nothing concrete he could pin down as dangerous, but there was something…he reminded John disconcertingly of men he had met in the army and in prison. Still, it was no excuse at all for misdirecting his outburst at Anna, who had done nothing wrong, who had merely been having fun and being her open, friendly self – whether or not Green had been flirting with her, and he had been…Maybe John was just being a jealous old fool.

He needed to apologise to Anna. He had been intending to do so on the walk home the previous night, but she had rushed off ahead and he had to wait for nearly another hour before Robert rang; then he had planned to make it up to her properly when he got back to the cottage, but she had been asleep – or, rather, pretending to be – and now she was gone again. Was she still angry? Was that it? He didn't blame her at all if that was the case, he was certainly angry with himself.

But, the thing was, not all her suddenly strange behaviour fit if she was only irritated. Avoiding him made sense, maybe (although Anna tended to prefer arguing things out - not that they ever really needed to since his release - it was John who brooded), but flinching from his touch, crying alone, those were not symptomatic of anger. Something else, then?

Suddenly John remembered that he had wanted not only to apologise but also to attempt to convince Anna to stay at home today. The headache, bad enough to not only make her seek a powder for the pain but also to make her faint without warning…it had jarred as soon as she said it. Anna was petite and delicate but he would never have described her as fragile. She had survived a difficult life under the grind of poverty and hardship and it had made her tougher than she looked. Any headache severe enough to make her lose consciousness warranted a doctor. However, she would never be prevailed upon to visit Clarkson, whose record didn't really instil confidence anyway, and he had settled, while walking back alone, for planning to persuade her to spend the day in bed to recuperate. Instead it seemed she had barely slept at all. But could that be it? Could her disconcerting, skittish behaviour be attributed to illness?

If so, the thought of her walking the route to the Abbey alone worried him. Downton could hardly be considered a dangerous area, but the path was secluded and dawn had scarcely broken yet – what if Anna fell or even fainted again? She had been so very shaken last night…Mrs Hughes, now he thought about it, had seemed ruffled too. The usually unflappable housekeeper had been flustered, her composure not quite as put together as usual. John had gone to find her after speaking to Anna, wanting to ask if she had noticed anything particularly untoward when she leant her a dress, but she had seemed to be in a rush and he had been apologetically brushed off with the explanation that she was tending to Lady Mary on Anna's behalf. Did Mrs Hughes know something he didn't – was there more to the story than a simple headache?

Anxious, now, to ensure Anna was alright and having worked himself up into a real state, John rushed through his morning ablutions and hastened up to the Abbey as quickly as his wretched leg would allow.

Consequently, he made it to Downton with plenty of time to spare before the servants' breakfast. He found Anna in the Boot Room and it was with a sinking heart that he saw she looked, if anything, worse than she had the night before. Her split lip had scabbed but the graze on her right cheekbone looked raw and aggravated, as did similar cuts on her opposite cheek and jaw. The whole right hand side of her face was shadowed with bruising and her eye had blackened. John winced in sympathetic pain. All this from hitting her head on the sink?

She was polishing with a sort of frantic fervour that disturbed him, though he couldn't say why, precisely. It was as though there was a wild desperation trapped inside her that she was trying to vent on Lady Mary's boots. Her hand clenched on the brush as he approached her and a fist clenched similarly around his heart at this obvious display of fear. Anna was frightened. Frightened of him? He wasn't sure. But his presence seemed undeniably to be making it worse. Her body had stilled and it was not that she was shaking, but more as though something was trembling from within her, trying to escape.

John wanted more than anything to wrap her in his arms and take whatever mantle of suffering had so suddenly descended on her upon himself instead – anything to alleviate her unknown burden. He wanted to hold her and tell her that no matter what had happened it would be alright; their love could endure anything – it had, after all, already endured everything, surely? – and he would keep her safe and never let her be hurt by the world again…But, after witnessing her reaction last night, he didn't dare so much as reach for her.

Instead he asked, "Why didn't you wait for me?" and detested that the rejection he felt was evident in his tone.

"I wanted to finish these before breakfast." Her voice was small and strained and only sort of sounded like Anna. She was avoiding his eyes as she gave the feeble excuse, making it hard for him to read her. Was it a conscious decision?

"Is it something I've done…?"

Her answer was too quick, as though she were rushing through a rehearsed response. "No, not anything." She tried to emphasise the point by shaking her head but the crack in her voice undermined her. "Nobody's done anything."

The last qualification was unrelated enough to his question that it gave him pause for some time after she had hurried out – eyes downcast, taking care to avoid brushing even slightly against him. He had only asked if he'd done something...

The others were beginning to congregate in the Servants' Hall so John put away the boots, which he had only half-heartedly taken out with a vague idea of cleaning them as a pretext for speaking to Anna without making her feel like she was being interrogated – not that that had worked very well.

Looking around, he noticed that actually all of the shoes needed cleaning – badly. They were unusually scuffed and arranged rather haphazardly, not even in their proper places. The table itself appeared to have moved slightly too. It was all rather odd. Bemused, John put it out of his mind, dismissing it as unimportant.

Anna paused just outside the doorway to the Boot Room, her heart still frantic against her throbbing ribs at the proximity to the place where- _Don't think about it._ Her pulse was agitated in her temples, in her ears; fear like the aftertaste of vomit lingered in her mouth and made her want to gag on the echo of unanswered cries and ignored pleas. Actually being in the place where _It_ had happened had been like semi-detachedly watching reality through a translucent but clingy veil of nightmares. It was almost as if there were two separate events running parallel and she herself was simultaneously experiencing neither and both. Even while, in her partially removed state, she heard herself attempt to console John with the weak excuses she could barely muster, she was witnessing _him_ throw her into the table with such force that the impact made her go involuntarily limp for those few crucial seconds it took _him_ to-

Gathering the shards of herself together, Anna shoved them back down her throat. The jagged pieces slid against each other, tearing her apart from the inside out; damage hidden from view. How long did it take for the internal bleeding to kill you without anyone realising what was wrong? She folded her hands to hide the shaking – even from herself. She refused to be defeated by a room!

Walking into the Servants' Hall with her head held high in spite of her downcast eyes, the effort vibrating through the muscles of her weary neck, Anna faltered. There were only two vacant seats: next to _him_ or opposite _him._ Unable to bear the possibility of accidentally meeting _his_ eyes, and refusing to allow John to sit next to _him_ , she made her decision and dropped into the nearest chair, sending a jolt of pain lancing from _down there_ up into her stomach as she did so.

Several pairs of eyes widened at the sight of her battered visage, with Thomas voicing what many must have been thinking when he exclaimed, in a tone uncharacteristically devoid of malice and maybe, just maybe, containing a hint of concern, "Blimey! What happened to you?"

Anna's tongue in her dry mouth was a stiff as the rest of her body. Mrs Hughes leapt hastily to her defence. "Leave her alone!" She reprimanded. _Please. Just leave me alone. Please..._

A number of eyes were still fixed on her but it was _his_ that felt like they scalded, melting her skin so that she could be remoulded into an ugly shape of _his_ creation. The side of her face tainted by _his_ gaze – as though her whole body wasn't already tainted with more than that – searing her skin and inducing a sickening combination of near paralytic terror and the hot bubbling shame that writhed and twisted in her gut.

"I fell," she muttered. "Cut my lip."

It was an extremely confined space but she had manged to put at least a foot of distance between _him_ and her body, perched rigidly on the far edge of her seat, cowering as far away as she possibly could. It wasn't far enough. It would never be far enough. No physical distance would banish _him_ and the thing _he_ had done from her mind.

 _He_ must be able to feel her shaking, and Anna loathed the power it gave _him_. As if she hadn't endured enough of _his_ power. She was dully furious with herself for barely feeling angry at _him_ at all, her mind was too stuck in a cyclical loop of barely restrained outright panic.

Anna felt, rather than saw, John come in and take the seat on the other side of the table. She couldn't look up lest she met his eyes and he read the sordid story written on her face, defacing her soul.

 _His_ hand crept on to her thigh. Much too tight and much, much too high – the thumbnail digging into her skin through the pathetically insufficient fabric of her skirt a reminder of who had taken her body, who owned her mind. Ice cascaded down the vertebrae of her spine at _his_ touch. Swallowing an outright scream, Anna leapt involuntarily to her feet, wrapping her own arms around her waist in a feeble attempt at protecting herself; the screams still pressing against her inner-ears, the dark underside of her eyelids, pushing against the skin stretched over her knuckles.

Everyone was now staring at her. She choked, "I'd better go up." Her voice sounded off even to her own ears.

"Lady Mary hasn't rung yet," John protested.

"I've things to do." She rushed from the room as quickly as she could while hopefully not arousing any more suspicion.

John stared after Anna. She didn't look like she was ill. If she looked sick, it was with fear; but he didn't know why! Had Anna merely been taken ill there would be no reason to hide that from him, she'd have come to him – if only for comfort. And she was undeniably hiding. In the space of a concert something had happened that she felt she had to keep from him, something which had terrified her so badly she was flinching from John's touch…he intended to find out what it was.

Turning to the one person who may have an explanation, he asked "How was Anna, when you saw her last night?"

An indiscernible shadow ghosted across Mrs Hughes' eyes before she replied, "How should she be?"

This was so unintelligible and seemingly deliberately obstructive an answer that John stopped for a moment, baffled. The housekeeper knew something he did not and she was being evasive. Why? He cautiously pried further. "She told me that she fell and cut her lip but I thought" _I know "_ it might be more serious than that; she's always one to minimise things." But not to lie. Anna never seemed to lie, nor even to withhold information – she had insistently advised against concealing things throughout the legal mess following Vera's death, ignoring her had been his mistake – but the more he thought about her story, the more it didn't quite make sense…

"I'm sure I don't know anything you don't know." Mrs Hughes appeared to be aiming for a consoling tone, but John was left feeling more disconcerted and bemused than he had to begin with. He was missing some piece of information about what had happened when Anna went down to get that powder, and it was being purposely kept from him. Something was wrong, but John had manged to gain no more insight into what that was than he had been in possession of when Anna came out of the Housekeeper's Sitting Room the previous night. All John knew for certain was that something awful had happened to Anna, and his concern was not unwarranted.

Refocusing on reality in time to hear Thomas ask sardonically "What is the matter with everyone this merry morn?", John was forced to concede that he was wondering much the same thing.

Anna was fiddling with Lady Mary's hair – her nimble fingers not as deft as usual. She had already dropped a handful of hair pins and been forced to scrabble to pick them up; now she fervently hoped that Lady Mary couldn't feel her hands shaking. She was being told something. With an effort, Anna focused on the words.

"When we go to London would you mind helping Lady Rose? We can't take Madge off Lady Edith." It took her saturated brain, which seemed to be processing everything in stilting slow motion that morning, a second to register what Lady Mary was saying. Her head was still pounding ferociously, foggy with lack of sleep and a persistent stinging burn radiating from several spots, so her nod was tentative; imperceptible. She tried to reinforce her willingness verbally – after all, she liked Lady Rose very much and needed to maintain her façade of normalcy – but her vocal chords had temporarily given in.

Lady Mary's eyes were on her in the mirror. "Anna, are you alright?" There was concern in her voice – it was more than just a polite enquiry – and on some removed level Anna was touched that she cared.

Focusing on summoning her voice into her mouth she replied so quietly she could barely hear herself. "Yes." The monosyllable was as much of a lie as she could muster, keeping her gaze firmly downcast lest the untruth – or worse, the truth - be read in her eyes.

"Only you've been very quiet." Lady Mary pushed.

Anna was visited by a desperate desire to rip her tightly locked control open and spill her secret out to her perceptive employer – who after all these years of service and loyalty and shared experiences was more like a friend; a sister, even. The thought was not only impertinent; it was a betrayal of Flora. But then _Lady Mary, ten years younger, was shaking Anna urgently awake, white-faced and begging her for help. A dazed woman who had just been informed Mr Matthew was dead was looking to Anna in numb denial for an assurance it wasn't true. Hours later, the same woman's screaming sobs drowned out her infant's plaintive wails as she clung to Anna, who stroked her hair uselessly, all restraint and decorum and class divisions crumbling in the face of offering insufficient support to the young widow breaking apart in her arms…_

Just as Lady Mary had come to her when a Turkish diplomat died in her bed and again much later when her heart died, Anna wanted to confess to her – someone who wouldn't do anything rash nor be destroyed by the truth – that her soul had died inside her and she didn't know how to survive it. During John's trial Lady Mary had been there for her to lean on physically and emotionally, her hand on Anna's back when she almost fell in the courtroom, around her shoulder when the sentence was commuted, and although Anna had been way past consolation it had made her feel just slightly less alone. Now that she was offering that shoulder again, part of Anna, the same part that was almost swaying on her feet, caved in already under the pressure of secrecy and curled around her shame, ached to collapse onto it.

She needed to leave the comparative security of Lady Mary's bedroom before her feeble, treacherous thoughts put words into her mouth that must not be spoken. Nothing she said would stay in this room; Lady Mary would realise how weak Anna was, how stupid, but she was still more than capable of causing a scene with Lord Gillingham and then everyone would know and John would find out and he would hang because of her, because of what she had made happen…Or else Lady Mary would think she had wanted it, as she had made _him_ think she did - _Don't think about it. Don't think. Don't feel._

"Will that be all milady?" Anna had not really raised her eyes the whole time she had been in the room, but now they fleetingly flickered upwards. Lady Mary appeared pensive and frustrated but evidently could come up with no really valid objection because she replied with some resignation "Yes, I suppose so."

Anna murmured "Very good milady" and left, once again training her eyes on the elegant carpet.

She was hurrying ahead of him down the hallway, unduly intent on some mundane task which he was fairly certain was unnecessary. It was the first time John had glimpsed her since her abrupt departure from breakfast as she had skipped lunch and generally avoided being downstairs at any moment that he was. Only by chance had he encountered her now and he was grimly sure that if she hadn't had information to impart she would already have made an excuse to get away.

"Just one night, I'll be back for dinner on Wednesday."

He reached out to touch her without thinking – a natural, automatic gesture of affection. "I'll miss you-" he started, but Anna recoiled violently from his hand with a sharp and painfully desperate cry that stabbed into his heart and lodged there. "Don't!"

He stared at her, frozen with shock.

"I'm sorry," her voice was low and - hunted. "I'm just tired…" A glaring lie. Tiredness did not do this to a person. John didn't doubt Anna was exhausted with all the extra strain the house party had put on downstairs, but this state she was in was so much more than simple weariness. It wasn't only that she was subdued. Radiant, optimistic Anna was shaken and skittish. What could have happened? He must have done something, said something…something that might explain- Anna, as attuned to him as usual, in spite of everything, seemed to read his mind and pre-empted him. "…and before you ask, you've done nothing wrong."

She was cringing away as she said it, almost imperceptibly, but she was. And she still wouldn't meet his eyes. "I must have done something wrong!" His frustration and worry bubbling over made it come out more vehemently than he had intended. Seeing her flinch anew made him feel sick with self-loathing. He made an effort to soften his tone, even as verbalising the truth of the situation scratched at his heart. "You won't talk to me; you won't look at me. I can't come near you."

The hurt was palpable in John's eyes, in his face; visceral, smothering; and the knowledge that she had caused it made Anna feel sick with remorseful self-hatred. It was made worse by the fact that she was about to hurt him more. He needed to stop asking and worrying and fussing because it only made it more likely that she would slip and give something away. She had to hurt him in order to protect him. _Better a broken heart than a broken neck._ As he had hurt her to protect her in that courtyard all those years ago. She needed to make John as angry with her as she had been with him that night, furious and hurt…No, she had to do more, worse, than that. Even left crying convulsively in the dark she had known he was doing it for some stupid noble reason, some misguided attempt to keep her safe – and she had loved him for it. John couldn't, he mustn't love her anymore. She wasn't good enough, clean enough, for that love now. He should hate her – she deserved to have him hate her. "We're in each other's pockets." She snapped "We live together, we work together; sometimes, I think it's just too much." It was too much. Too much to take back. Too much to bear…

The bafflement and pain in John's face as he reeled with her harsh words hit Anna like _his_ fist had the previous night. Needing to get away from it, struggling to hold herself together at the fraying seams, Anna turned on her heel and walked away – battling to choke back tears that weren't coming.

It was her only option. She couldn't keep this up; it was tearing them both apart. She had to leave the cottage. Maybe the less time John spent with her the less suspicious he would become and the less chance there was of him piecing together any of the truth and putting himself in jeopardy. And maybe separation could also lessen the sting of her actions. She had been cruel earlier and he must loathe her now, so he could focus on that instead of the hurt of her betrayal – the one he knew about and the one he didn't. But she couldn't keep this up. It had taken everything that was left inside of Anna and flew in the face of all Anna was to say those things to John and she knew with a cold, unavoidable certainty that she did not have a repeat performance in her.

Knocking on Mrs Hughes' door, she swallowed the hard lump in her throat and readied herself for a conversation she had never imagined having. She began to open the door, but faltered on the threshold. _Don't think about it. Don't think about it. Don't think –_ she couldn't keep her head above the ruthless onslaught as the room flickered and changed before her.

 _Crumpled in a broken ball in the smallest, most protected, inaccessible place she could find: the space between the side of Mrs Hughes' cupboard and the would-be reassuring pressure of the cool wall. Tears and a haze of terror smeared across her vision. The darkness of the room blanketing her with shattering, inadequate relief. Shock disconnecting her from the agony in her body. Pain was grey and blurry. It was shame and disgust that spilled red-black over her bruised skin. Ingrained under her nails where she had tried to scrape the reek of what_ he _had done away. Bloodstains were hard to wash out._ His _smell coated Anna. It clung to her matted hair and tainted her ripped clothes, pervading everything. Heaving on her hands and knees into Mrs Hughes' waste paper basket as she realised that the poisonous taste in her mouth was the mingling of her own blood, from where she had bitten through her lip – which tasted of rust and pain – with_ his _from where she had bitten down on_ his _hand, animalistic with fear, in a desperate, futile attempt to force_ him _to let go – which tasted of venom and unparalleled terror-_ It was a room. Only a room. She was not this weak. She would not be dragged under by it.

Shaking off the fingers of the waking nightmare before it made her visibly lose control, before it spilled from the place it was locked inside her head and into the rest of her body, Anna dithered in the doorway – unnerved by the unexpected presence of Mr Carson. His masculinity was stringing out her already fraught nerves further and she was reluctant to bother Mrs Hughes when she appeared to finally be getting a moment of peace. Anna had already asked of her more than anyone had the right to expect and the last thing she wanted to do was intrude on her well-deserved respite.

"You're busy…"

"No, no." Mr Carson interjected, standing up slowly but making her twitch compulsively nonetheless. "I'll say goodnight."

"Mr Carson." Mrs Hughes smiled fondly at him as he left, passing Anna in the doorway with a fleeting glance of mild concern. Everyone seemed to be giving her that look today: a look that spoke of worry and puzzlement tempered by a reluctance to pry and unwillingness to get involved.

"What is it?"

Anna was wringing her hands distractedly when she spoke in one pained breath. "When I get back from London, I want to move back upstairs."

Elsie was flabbergasted and horrified in equal measure and, quite unable to conceal those emotions, she asked – rather louder than intended, for she made her poor girl flinch, "What? Why, for heaven's sake?"

Anna seemed to be choking on words that she perhaps struggled to admit to herself as much as she struggled to verbalise them. Her girl's once bright eyes were swimming with unshed tears and Elsie's heart clenched.

"Because I can't let him touch me!" Anna sounded nearly hysterical so Elsie didn't want to ask her what she meant by this.

"But whatever happened," somehow she couldn't bear to say the ugly word that hung in the air between them, and she doubted Anna could stand to hear what had been done to her described so baldly either, "was not Mr Bates' fault, surely?"

Apparently this had been the wrong thing to say, because a whole new set of emotions ripped across Anna's face before settling on shock, presumably at the suggestion that her beloved husband could possibly be thought to be at fault, and a horrible sought of despair that ran deep in her eyes.

"Of course not! He is without fault," her devotion – usually so heart-warming and humbling - now only seemed damaging and hopeless, "and that's the point! I'm not good enough for him – not now." Her girl's voice was shattered but certain, factual.

Elsie couldn't bear it – any of it.

"Why say that?"

Anna's explanation was gasped out through sobs as she stood alone in the middle of the room, looking viciously vulnerable, gripping her own hands for support in the absence of anybody else for her to hold onto. Twisting her wedding ring – and Elise's heart – compulsively around her finger. "Because I think that…somehow…I must have made it happen!" Her voice rose to a low cry at the end and Elsie's breath caught in her throat. She wanted to weep and rage with the horror of it all: what had been done to her girl, the panicked, crushing responsibility she felt to provide a non-existent answer to a situation spiralling in around her. Elsie hadn't thought it could get any worse than what she had witnessed last night, but this – Anna blaming herself for the actions of that…

She couldn't fall apart. Anna needed her.

Propelled by the urgent need to contradict the unthinkable suggestion of Anna bearing any degree of responsibility, Elsie exclaimed "Stuff and nonsense! You were attacked by a violent evil man! There is no sin in that!" Then winced at her own bluntness.

"But I feel dirty!" Anna wailed in despair and Elsie felt like she was being implored to understand. "I can't let him touch me because I'm soiled."

Her heart hurt and she didn't know what to do. The steadfast housekeeper prided herself on having a practical solution to every eventuality; but this was something else, something closing over her head and, she feared, Anna's too. Uncertainly, she resorted to the thought that had been chasing itself around her head for hours. "Anna, I've been thinking," she reached for her hands. The younger woman she'd come to see as her surrogate daughter drew back but didn't try to pull away. Elsie stroked slow and hopefully soothing circles on the back of Anna's shaking hands with the heel of her thumb – a tip for comforting those in distress that she had read in a controversially modern article about helping shell-shocked soldiers; she didn't see any reason why the same sort of support could not be applied here. "We must go to the police."

The hands were abruptly pulled away as Anna shook her head in jerky refusal. "No."

Elsie took a deep breath, feeling it fill her lungs with the strength to say what she knew had to be addressed, rallying herself and quashing the nausea that had flooded her stomach at even the thought of how her girl was going to react.

"But suppose you're with child? What will you do then?"

Anna sucked in a violent stab of breath but did not answer immediately. For once she was not staring at the floor but instead appeared to be fixated on something Elsie could not, and suspected she did not want to, see. Her eyes were glazed with a nameless emotion under which lurked the fathomless pain of experiences beyond anyone's years. When she looked at Elsie her eyes were still unseeing and Elsie felt the bottom drop out of her stomach even as her heart plummeted into it, because there was a resigned conviction in Anna's gaze that filled her with an indistinct but instinctive dread.

"I'll kill myself." Her voice was matter-of-fact, almost as though the answer was obvious.

Elsie felt as though she had been submerged in icy water, drowning, flailing, out of her depth. Those words, this moment, her own ineffectuality, would haunt her waking and sleeping hours until she died. She knew it. With a sharpness born of chilling fear she exclaimed "I won't listen to that!" as though her reprimand was even the beginning of a solution.

And suddenly Elsie was angry. Angry that she had been put in this position, angry at her own uselessness, angry at what had been done to her girl, angry at the bastard who had done it, angry that Anna blamed herself – as though she could have done anything to prevent it, as though Elsie didn't know she had done everything to prevent it, angry that that hadn't been enough…

"No man," not that he deserved to be dignified with that noun, "should be able to do what he did and get away with it."

"And when Mr Bates has killed him, will you come with me to the prison when my husband is hanged?" She asked flatly and Elsie was ashamed. What right did she have to be angry when it was Anna this had been done to? Anna whose thoughts now dwelt in such dark places.

She wanted to assure her girl that at this stage she would follow her anywhere if she thought she could ease the journey, but she was acutely aware that that hadn't been the point of Anna's words. Desperate, she played the last card she hoped could convince Anna to tell someone, someone more suitable than Elsie. "The poor man's heart is breaking with not knowing."

For the first time Anna met her eyes squarely. With a steely combination of agony and gritty, tightly wound determination she stated "Better a broken heart than a broken neck." She said it as though reciting a motto. "So can I have a room, please?"

She was begging there, at the end; iron will gone and dreadful fragility laid bare again. Elsie could not refuse her girl when she looked at her like that – with such desperate pleading. Relenting, she replied heavily "You can. You must wait until there's some reason for you to give Mr Bates."

Now she was encouraging more lies which would widen the rift between the one couple in the Abbey she had believed unbreakable. Oh, what a slippery slope deception was, just as her mother had always cautioned. Elsie had never had cause to heed that warning until now. Attempting an amendment, she added, "But I wish you would decide that honesty is the best policy." She barely knew who the advice was directed at anymore, Anna or herself. Anna's lower lip was trembling and if she had been speaking to Anna it was certainly to no avail.

"Very well. Try to take a break from it while you're in London."

"There can be no break from it."

Anna seemed unsure what else to do or say and so she departed without further comment, leaving Elsie with her own insensitivity ringing in her ears and the aching sense that she had failed her girl in some way.

A frenetic, almost frantic energy was contained within Anna's searching that Mary could not quite put her finger on. She watched her maid with no small degree of worry before asking "Anna, _what is_ the matter?"

"I'm sorry milady, I just can't seem to find the gloves that should be worn with this outfit." There was unwarranted distress in her voice.

"Well there's no need to look so worried; I'll help you look. Are you sure you packed them?"

"Yes milady. I think so."

Mary found the gloves in question after a mere few seconds of searching. They had slipped down the side of the smaller case of accessories but had really not been that difficult to locate. Anna apologised again, Mary raised a hand to cut her off; and felt a thrill of horrified shock when Anna flinched hard as though expecting to be struck.

"Anna?"

"I'm sorry milady."

Mary exhaled exasperatedly. "Anna, please stop apologising! I don't want you to be sorry. I want you to tell me what's wrong."

"Nothing milady; honestly. I'm just tired – I haven't been sleeping well." She turned away to unnecessarily refold items that had barely been mussed during the search.

"I wish you'd tell me what it really is." _I wish you'd trust me like I've trusted you. I wish you'd let me help you. I wish you believed I was strong enough to handle the knowledge of whatever it is that's suddenly crushing you from the inside out._

"They'll be missing you in the drawing room, milady." She said quietly. She was avoiding eye contact again and with a temporarily defeated sigh, Mary left, pulling gloves on as she went and mulling over the strange, inexplicably upsetting interaction with her friend.

Anna appeared in the passageway, evidently having only just arrived, because she was still wearing her hat and coat. John was delighted to see her, hoping so hard it hurt that perhaps something had changed during her absence and she would be happier, willing to explain what had happened, or both. He needed to get to the bottom of what was wrong eventually but he would, for now, be more than content to let it go if her worrying behaviour had desisted and they could go back to normal.

"You're back. Good. How was it?" He wanted to let Anna know he was pleased to see her and start the conversation gently so as not to spook her. It was strange having to think of his wife in such terms. She was holding her muscles very tightly and her eyes were flitting all over the place. When she had come nearer he had noticed the injuries to her face for the first time since her return and was shocked anew by how severe they looked. Hit her head on the sink…?

"Alright. Lady Mary seemed quite pleased." It was a natural and perfectly reasonable response to his enquiry, but it was not an Anna greeting and she veritable exuded tension and discomfort. John's heart sank. Clearly, whatever was wrong had not gone away during her trip – she seemed just as distressed as before going to London.

"Come here."

John only wanted to hold her for a moment. They were usually so eager and enthusiastic in their reunions after even the briefest separation – yearning for physical contact; but now Anna visibly stiffened at the suggestion.

Ducking her head, she mumbled abruptly "Better get on."

He felt a sort of desperation claw its way up inside him. It had been three days since she'd voluntarily made any contact with him at all. Something was tearing the person he loved more than anything - the person he would die for and kill for - up inside and he couldn't stand watching helplessly with no idea even what had brought about this sudden and drastic change in his usually sunny wife.

"Kiss me, please. Or tell me what's happened. One or the other." He sounded pleading and in the presence of anyone but Anna he would have loathed that vulnerability; but in this situation John had no qualms about imploring – he would have got down on his knees, bad leg be damned, if he'd thought it could make a blind bit of difference.

"Don't bully me."

She might as well have slapped him across the face. He would never ever even contemplate hurting Anna – by word or action – but she had said it as though it were to be expected that he could do so voluntarily, even with malicious intent. _Bully._ Was that really how she perceived his actions? Was that really what he was doing? All John's self-doubt came rushing forth in a toxic tide of insecurity.

Anna was shrinking against the wall, again, with a trapped look in her eyes that twisted John's stomach around his heart as he realised belatedly that her voice had been almost a whimper. He felt his windpipe constrict, making it hard to breathe. Had he done this? With a concerted effort to lower his voice and soften his tone, he tried to look as unimposing as possible – a struggle for a statuesque man in relation to a petite woman who seemed smaller than ever these days, almost hollow.

"Anna, you're upset. You're unhappy and I don't know why." He couldn't cry. "You say it's not me and I hope that's true," though God knows he didn't believe it was "but there is a reason and I need to find out what that is. I won't press you now if it makes things worse," the last thing John wanted to do was add to Anna's unknown troubles, he'd already scared her, "but in the end I will find out…" He meant it as a sort of promise – a pledge that he wouldn't give up until he knew what was wrong and she was freed from the shadows and secrets that currently swathed her, that he expected nothing from her she was not ready to give and that his devotion was without conditions or a time limit – and hoped it didn't come across as threatening.

Mr Carson was approaching so John left it at that and walked away, dejected but determined to act on his parting words. And yet he was unable to shake the haunting image of how distraught Anna had looked, in such a state and him, supposedly her husband, uselessly pointlessly unable to help – ignorant of the cause of her misery. John couldn't cope with the concept of her grappling with this dark source of anguish alone…

Mr Carson was approaching and Anna's muscles tightened with anxiety. In spite of the fact that she had known him for almost two decades her mind seemed insistent on erasing this familiarity with the fact he was a man and she was in a confined space. With an effort she focused on regulating her breathing, John's words echoing around her brain – filling her with a dread that coiled in a nauseating curdle in the pit of her stomach.

"Anna, could you let Lady Mary know Lord Gillingham is here."

A noose of unadulterated fear tightened around her neck. _He_ was coming back. _He_ would be here again…in all her fear and her attempts to protect John - from himself, from her shame - it had never crossed her mind that _he_ might return, that she would have to face _him_ – in front of John – that John would see _him_ – that _It_ could happen again- It was an effort to force any sound out past the suffocating pressure of her panic, so when she spoke her voice wobbled wildly. "Lord Gillingham? But we just saw him in London!" she objected, hearing the desperation colouring her own protestations. Carson was surveying her with distinct discombobulation. Horror must be etched undisguised across her face. Her weak attempt to encrypt it with a blank mask failed. Molten panic bubbling up inside her like rising floodwater inside her rib cage, spilling over the bones and cascading down her spine, left no room for composure.

"Well he's come back," he replied, mystified.

"Is his valet with him?" the urgent question had left Anna's lips before she could consider how bizarre it would sound. "I mean," she amended hastily – it needed to sound like a more reasonable query, "is he staying? She'll want to know."

"He doesn't seem to be." The knot of fear that had taken root in her chest eased slightly as some of the immediate panic drained from her tight muscles. "Now will you give her the message please?" There was a bite of impatience, irritation, in his voice that Anna had heard frequently, but not directed at her personally since she first came to Downton. Awkwardly, she ducked her head and hastened off, trying not to shudder as she passed close by him in the narrow passage. The now familiar cold lead weight dropped back into her chest to resume its permanent residence as the temporary sense of relative relief that _he_ was not here dissipated and the hard knot of the knowledge of what had been done to her returned.

"You'll never believe what's happened. Braithwaite left! Family troubles." Lady Grantham sounded exasperated and despondently resigned at the same time.

"Are we living under a curse?" Lord Grantham demanded explosively. Anna twitched involuntarily. "Doomed to lose our ladies' maids at regular intervals?" This was indeed how it must appear to the family – with their total lack of insight into the complexities of the relationships below stairs. To them it must look as though those who left, seemingly increasingly often under cover of night, were here one day and gone the next with no explanatory sequence of events building up to their departure. Although, on this occasion, Anna herself honestly had no idea why Miss Braithwaite had left, due to her own preoccupation, and had no intention of doing anything other than taking the 'family troubles' explanation at face value. She was jolted out of her vague musings by Lord Grantham unexpectedly directing his next question at her. "Anna did you know about this?" She jumped at the volume of his voice and the fact that he was now looking at her expectantly. Quickly she gave her head a minute shake.

"Is anything the matter?"

Someone else asking; someone else had noticed something was wrong. Clearly her façade of normalcy was hopelessly unconvincing. Anna's hands tightened on the pair of Lady Grantham's gloves she was holding, frightened both by the prospect of yet another person poking and prying and possibly finding her out and the fact that his attention was fixed on her.

"No milord," she murmured.

"You seem very quiet lately. I hope Bates is behaving himself."

His tone was jovial so Anna forced a weak smile. "He never does anything else."

Lord Grantham laughed genially and Anna flinched again. Realising too late to disguise it that Lady Grantham was watching her, she asked "Will that be all, milady?" and handed over the gloves without looking at her.

"Yes, thank you."

She could feel two pairs of concerned eyes boring into the back of her head as she left the room and shifted uncomfortably, trying inconspicuously to speed up as her hands began to shake.

Anna was highly aware of Mr Carson standing not far enough behind her as she attempted to talk to Mrs Hughes.

"So I can move back in?" The poorly disguised desperation in her voice made her wince. She needed to make what she was saying less likely to arouse the suspicion of the confusedly listening butler. "Edna's room will be empty now and if I'm to dress Her Ladyship and Lady Mary I think it makes sense." The justification sounded pathetic even to her own ears.

Mrs Hughes appeared close to tears when she answered with resignation, "If that's what you really want."

 _Of course it's not! Of course I don't want to move away from my husband, away from my home. I have to. For John. For John. For John…_

John's eyes were on her as she closed the suitcase with trembling hands.

"Anna…"

She couldn't look up and see the pained bewilderment in his voice reflected in his face.

"Anna, talk to me, please…"

She set her jaw and stared resolutely at the suitcase resting on the bed in front of her. "There's nothing to talk about. I'm moving back into the Abbey so that I can dress Her Ladyship as well as Lady Mary. I need to if I'm going to do my job properly." Trying to keep her voice steady, it still faltered more than once. Anna willed her quivering lip to be still and built a dam against the tears that were threatening yet again. She was sick of crying.

"That's not what this is about. You worked for years as head housemaid and were also required to dress all three girls and you did it wonderfully." Where once the compliment would have made her flush with pleasure now it just made her feel nauseous. He wouldn't say these things if he knew how unworthy she was of his misplaced esteem. "You don't need to move back into the Abbey to do your job competently. This is something to do with what's happened. You are moving back because you don't want to be here anymore," John's voice cracked. She could hear the struggle to remain calm straining his words. "because of whatever's happened. But I don't know what that is. I only know that you are suddenly sad and scared and I don't know why and I don't know how to help y-Anna!"

Suddenly overcome by a wave of dizziness, Anna had swayed dangerously on the spot and almost fallen, her vision tunnelling in and out as darkness fleetingly fluctuated across the surface of her mind. Out of the corner of her eye she saw John reach for her instinctively, but Anna could not bear to be touched right now. Not when she was this vulnerable. Not when her body had just been taken out of her control again. She would scream or she would faint properly – she wouldn't have the strength to stop it. Having grabbed the edge of the bed to steady herself she whispered lowly "Please. Please don't."

John withdrew the proffered hand as though he had been burnt. "Anna." Probably he was aiming to keep his voice gentle. He merely sounded broken and helpless. "Anna, I will not do anything you don't want me to; I won't touch you without your permission; but I need to know what's wrong."

She pressed her lips together. John rephrased the question cajolingly. "What just happened?"

"I," her voice was still barely audible, "just suddenly felt faint. I'm sure it's nothing."

She wasn't. The lingering dizziness was not going away and there was a sharp cramp in her abdomen, distinct from the lingering throb of what _he_ had done – damaged – lower down. Perhaps it was just a bout of weakness brought on by lack of sleep. She hadn't eaten properly since _that night_ either – her appetite entirely gone and the proximity to too many people at the large meal time gatherings compelling her to intentionally avoiding being present for them.

John followed her train of thought with an ease that scared her. Was she really so easy to read?

"When did you last eat anything?" he asked; shrewd, anxious.

Anna's vision was rippling and her legs were shaking. The enquiry felt invasive as it scraped across her vibrating nerves. She snapped back defensively, "I'm not a child; I don't need you to check up on me! Stop nagging." _Please. Please. Just stop asking so I can keep you safe. So I can stop thinking._

Her harsh words ingrained hurt – no longer shocked, if anything: weary – more deeply into the lines of John's face, but he didn't relent.

"How can I not worry?" He demanded forcefully. "One minute our life is wonderful and the next thing I know you are bruised and shaken. You're jumpy and silent and I can't come near you – from what I've seen, no one can come near you. You are lying but I don't know what about and now you tell me that you want to move out of our home and expect me to believe that the fact you almost collapsed right in front of me is nothing? Anna, I don't think I have ever been more worried in my life!"

His voice, thick with emotion, had risen – not quite to a shout – but it was too loud for the small bedroom. The walls were pressing in. Anna couldn't move, she couldn't breathe properly. _His crushing hand at her throat. A disorientating blow of knuckles knocking her face sideways. Fingers ripping her hair, but not bothering to cover her mouth – knowing nobody would hear her over the sound of opera overhead, nobody would come. Her knowing it too though it didn't stop her from screaming until her throat tore and on and on beyond. He_ was behind her eyelids. Inside her skull. Her grip on the present was tenuous. Petrified of slipping back into the Boot Room in John's presence, she focused every scrap of her being onto wrenching her mind away. _Don't think. Don't think. Don't. Think._

Her throat was dry and raw in her ears with unshed tears that had built in the sockets of her eyes – icing dull pain through them and into her clenched jaw. Her teeth ached.

"Leave me alone," she begged, "Please just leave me alone," convinced she was about to shatter into irreparable fragments in front of him. Willing him just to leave the room or, better still, the house, where the taint of her couldn't reach him, before she came undone, Anna exhaled in wretched relief as he turned and, with an anguished look which she felt in the back of her neck and the place where her spine met her hips and the bones of the wrists taking almost her full weight as she gripped the case that was the only thing anchoring her upright, left.

With the soft thud of the bedroom door closing, her knees finally gave out and she crumpled to the floor. Curling into the foetal position, she wanted Flora. Flora's arms and Flora's scent and the invincible, unassailable safety of Flora's presence. A single tear, for her sister, for John, for herself, forced its way through her defences and tracked down her cheek, trickling along the side of her nose.

Anna permitted herself five minutes of despair, before wrenching her body back to its feet and preparing to return – permanently – to the Abbey, in time to avoid the servants' dinner. Before she left their bedroom, on a split second whim, she shoved one final item into the suitcase.

"Bates, do you know anything about why Braithwaite left?"

"I don't milord," he replied honestly. He had been so wrapped up in Anna recently that he doubted he would even have noticed the vaguely disquieting woman's departure if it wasn't for the fact Anna was now tending to Lady Grantham – and was moving back into the Abbey ostensibly to do so. "They say she had some troubles at home."

"I hope it's not too much for Anna." The mention of her made John's throat tighten. He unfolded the dressing gown in his hands to give himself something to do.

"Bates?" Robert: only ever perceptive when John didn't want him to be.

With an effort he admitted heavily, "She wants to move back into the house, milord." He helped him into the dressing gown as he spoke. "She says she needs to if she is to perform her duties properly."

"I something wrong between you?" Robert sounded genuinely saddened at the possibility and so, in the knowledge that his employer honestly cared, John decided to confess what was bothering him.

"Yes," he paused at the understatement, aware that Robert was waiting for him to elaborate. "But I don't know what it is." He took a deep, steadying breath. "She says it's nothing I've done but how can I believe that? It must be my fault because she is incapable of fault." With aching and wholehearted certainty, this was true. John paused for a moment, closing his eyes briefly as though in so doing he could block out the pain of Anna's silence. Making a gargantuan effort to maintain his composure, John impulsively made a decision to lay himself bare to his old friend and trust him to offer some kind of guidance for how to navigate this impossible hell. It was from not putting his faith in Robert that he had come a cropper before, and so he swallowed his pride and spoke frankly. "I don't know what to do."

When Robert spoke it sounded measured and considered. "There is no such thing as a marriage between two intelligent people that does not sometimes have to negotiate thin ice." It was perfectly true, and yet the dark thought flitted across John's mind that this was not so much 'thin ice' as the freezing depths in which the Titanic had met its bleak end. Not for the first time, he wondered whether the love that had begun on the day the news of the doomed ship's destruction reached everyone's ears was not perhaps similarly fated – cursed to end in tragedy. He'd had cause to morbidly wonder this before now – not least in long days and even longer nights spent in a cell – but never had he given the superstition such serious consideration as now. His and Anna's love had negotiated far more than its fair share of thin ice already…what if this time they had gone through to the depths below?

"I know. You must wait until things become clear. And they will."

In spite of himself, John was somewhat reassured by the other's warmth and conviction.

"The damage cannot be irreparable when a man and a woman love each other as much as you do." There was a short pause before Robert, seemingly embarrassed by his uncharacteristically weighty sentiments, remarked with a laugh, "My goodness! That was strong talk for an Englishman!"

John smiled wryly, but internally he hoped more fervently than he had ever wished for anything in his life that his old army comrade was correct; that the love between him and Anna was enough to repair whatever damage had been done to her.

 _A/N: Reviews genuinely light up my life and make such a difference to how I feel about my writing._ _J_

 _Next update may be in 2 weeks as it is a very long chapter. Let me know if you would rather I posted it in 2 parts (one this Sunday, one next Sunday)._


	3. Chapter 3

**Trigger Warnings for this chapter: aftermath of rape, denial, pregnancy as a result of rape, some details of pregnancy, depression, slight suicidal and graphic self-harming (not cutting but pretty grim) thoughts, very implied (not at all explicit) reference to child abuse. Please take care of yourselves – this is quite a heavy, dark story. If ever anyone needs to skip a specific trigger but would like a summary of what happened just let me know in a PM and I will summarise it for you _._**

 _A/N: This is the chapter where we diverge from canon and explore another direction this bleak plotline could have taken. My version is by no means happier than Fellowes', but I hope it is handled with slightly more insight and care. I have been trying to write this fic as deep pov as much as possible anyway, but, just in case it isn't obvious, from this point onwards Anna is an 'unreliable narrator' because she is in denial. Thank you so much for your reviews and support!_

 _ALL CREDIT FOR THE NICKNAME 'ANGEL PRINCESS ANNA' GOES TO THE LOVELY KRISTEN APA WHO HAS GIVEN ME HER PERMISSION TO USE IT IN THIS FIC._

 **Chapter 3 – Lies We Tell Ourselves**

 _ **Sometimes, we survive by forgetting.**_

Anna only just made it to the bathroom in time. Her stomach was being torn through her throat while her ribs and diaphragm protested dully as she dry-heaved into the toilet; her stomach rebelling viciously against food that had barely been consumed in days. She sank back onto her heels, resting on her aching knees, blinking away the tears retching had brought to her eyes. Her head was splitting and vomiting nothing had not brought even the slightest relief to the persistent nausea that had dogged her ever since - _Don't think. Don't think. Don't think._

She was so tired.

Her mouth tasted sour and dry: this must be what despair tasted like. Resting her pounding head against the cold toilet bowl, Anna shut her stinging, heavy eyes and drew her knees up to her chest, trying in vain to banish her body's desire to throw up again. It was three in the morning. She had only gone to bed two and a half hours ago and already she had been forced to rush to the bathroom four times. Her stomach cramped and she swallowed back both the soft moan and the acrid bile. But it was her stomach, where the pain was, not her abdomen. The monthly twinges had not materialised and nor indeed had any other aspect of her cycle. She was late. Her last time had been the week of the house party, when her and John were too exhausted from all the extra work to have the chance to make love. She remembered the customary pang of subdued sadness as she resigned herself to another month of being no closer to bearing John's baby…

It was not uncommon for her to skip a month or even two if she was under strain or in distress – her cycle had almost ceased altogether when she was cut off from John during his imprisonment. It must be because she still wasn't eating or sleeping properly. She had lost weight and she knew that could cause a lapse in regularity; the past weeks had made her ill, which would also explain why her stomach couldn't seem to hold onto the little food she did manage to force down recently.

Anna's stomach convulsed with another clenching spasm and she rocked forward on her knees to vomit into the toilet bowl. Bones aching, white pain pulsing in her temples, she longed, with an intensity so sharp it caused a physical agony in her chest, for Flora's roughly calloused hands stroking her damp hair back off her face, rubbing circles on her back, for the way she had held her when the chemicals from the mill had got into the tenement water supply and made her so sick she had thought it would never stop, and the gentle nonsense she had whispered for hours until Anna had fallen asleep in her lap: " _You're so brave my lovey; shh, shh, you're safe, I've got you; I'll keep you safe my Angel Princess Anna-"_

Another voice, teasing – mocking, pushed into her memories. _"You're an angel from above."_ _He_ had called her _'angel'_ , taking the word and making it filthy, poison in the veins under her skin. Nothing escaped the taint of _him_ – not even the memory of that endearment, all she had left of her sister.

* * *

Stood in front of the long mirror in her bedroom three hours later, Anna twisted her hands compulsively, as though by exerting enough pressure she could force the traces of _him_ out of her body – or at least contain the turmoil within, where it could hurt nobody but her. Her wedding ring bit her finger, the smooth metal digging into her skin when she pressed on it. Would it leave a mark – a symbol of her lies and treachery? She half-wished it would; whether as a reminder of who she had been or a silent admittance that she could never be that person again, she wasn't sure.

She had opened the window in the vain hope that the cool morning air might make her alert enough to face the day and temporarily quell her nausea. Half-blinded by burning tears that her eyes were too tired – and too dehydrated from being sick all night – to cry properly, Anna stood, holding her rigid muscles locked as though this might hold her together as she tried to smooth her composure out with clenched hands.

The chill wind blowing through the bleak little room – so unlike their painstakingly lovingly decorated bedroom at the cottage – _not mine anymore, only John's room now_ – was making her feel exposed; which was illogical as _it_ had happened inside… _the cloying smell of boot polish and fear and she was drowning in it, under the glare of artificial light- Stop it. Don't think about it. Don't think about it._

Perhaps it was merely the prospect of imminently having to face everyone and pretend she didn't see their searching looks that hadn't stopped as the weeks passed.

Resigning herself, with a shuddering intake of cold morning air, to the impending day, Anna picked up her tin of powder and tried to breathe shallowly. She had never worn make-up until it happened and so she associated the scent of it with deception and the slightly infected burn of rubbing cheap cosmetics into her cuts and over her bruises, in the hope that by concealing them she would put them out of sight and therefore out of John's mind. What the powder could not be made to conceal was the blue bags smudged under her eyes or the lids that seemed to droop with the surrender of fatigue.

Along with her severely scraped back hair, this had altered Anna's appearance so much that when she caught a glimpse of herself in windows in passing, she no longer recognised her own reflection. She put herself in mind of a woman twice her age. In fact, she looked like her mother – beaten down by life to the point that she no longer had the will to get up again, let alone fight back. The thought made her shudder; although not as much as the other likeness she was beginning to see in herself.

Anna was a well-read woman, mostly due to John's passion for literature, and she could not help but call to mind – while staring with a kind of horrified fascination at the person in the mirror in front of her – Tess of the D'Urbervilles after she tries to make herself ugly, undesirable, safe. It had not been her conscious reason for changing her hairstyle – that had been hideous practicality: less of a wave made it harder for hair to be grabbed, to be pulled – but she wondered now whether the motives of Hardy's protagonist hadn't been at the back of her mind…She felt more like some sort of sullied, fallen woman in the kind of tawdry sensationalist story that would be serialised in those magazines Ethel used to hide in their shared room.

* * *

John was waiting anxiously at the foot of the stairs, feeling queasy with the by now familiar combination of trepidation and hopeful tension; willing today to be the day Anna looked slightly better or offered some kind of an explanation…

He had stopped hoping for miracles weeks ago, now he just silently begged for something about the situation to begin to improve. This distance and secrecy couldn't last forever, surely?

However, until such a time as there was an alteration in Anna's attitude or behaviour, John was fully prepared to go on like this: waiting and offering what he hoped she understood to be unswerving and unconditional support and respecting the boundaries she had wordlessly set (no physical contact, no sudden movement or raised voices…), but all the while gently pressing her for answers. He knew she hated being asked about what was wrong and he hated himself every time something he said made her flinch, but he did desperately need to find out what had happened. It wasn't that he begrudged her privacy or right to keep whatever she pleased from him, but he was acutely aware that she was struggling with some terrible thing quite alone, and John couldn't bear his helplessness in the face of her obvious persistent distress. He would willingly walk on burning coals if he thought it might even slightly lessen the weight fracturing Anna's precious, beautiful (and, he had misguidedly believed, unbreakable) spirit.

He had imagined at first that maybe she could pull herself out of the shadows without telling him about her secret; he could have resigned himself to moving forward unknowingly provided he was sure she was happy – or at least safe. Increasingly, though, it was becoming apparent that Anna was not so much swathed in shadows as opaque, impenetrable darkness. Every passing day made her look more crushed and miserable, and just as frightened as she had on the night of Dame Nellie Melba's concert – when whatever had happened, happened. She looked defeated. Anna, who had refused to doubt his innocence or her ability to prove it in the face of near insurmountable circumstantial evidence, looked defeated. And she was alone because he didn't know why.

So John intended to continue to push until he found out what had stolen her spark and helped her take it back. He would suffer anything for Anna, but he could only do so if she let him in.

At that moment, his maudlin musings were broken by the arrival of the subject of his thoughts. _Think of the angel_ he mentally misquoted.

"I don't know why you always wait for me. There's no need." John's heart sank and he tried to count to ten slowly in his head to get his emotions under control so he wouldn't say anything he would regret. Her saying anything at all was better than the days when she merely pushed past him in silence and he was forced to watch her go, his heart taking the strain of Atlas' shoulders as he resisted the impulse to stop her with a soft touch to her arm (knowing from previous mistakes that this would induce not a pause, but rather fear or even panic); but he was already preferring the cursory greetings he generally received to this slightly hostile stance she seemed to be taking today.

Anna appeared to curl in on herself (he couldn't tell if she actually was or if her palpable emotions were merely projecting onto his perception of her physicality) defensively – like a wounded hedgehog. Was it his increased proximity to her that was causing this evident heightened discomfort? John usually stood to the side of the stairs, but today he was at the foot – having hoped he would be able to encourage her to at least have a proper conversation, if not tell him what was wrong.

Her attempt at masking the poorly disguised desperation tinging her remark with irritation had already made it apparent that this endeavour was not going to be successful. A frustration born of worry and weary confusion and bordering on anger – though not at Anna, _never at Anna_ \- welled up in John at that moment. It was through gritted teeth that he replied, frankly "Because I want to be the first to greet you every morning." There was an unintended and unspecific but nonetheless present trace of accusation implied by his tone. Anna wouldn't look up at him as she relied tersely, "Well, as I said, there's no need."

He was treated to one brief glance up at the end of that rebuff, but even then her eyes were fixed on some indistinct spot to the left of his shoulder as she persisted in her refusal to meet his steady gaze. John's frustration almost bubbled over. "There's ev- " His voice was louder than he'd intended – too loud, certainly, for such a private conversation – and he cut himself off as a startled housemaid hurrying past shot him a nervous glance. His throat constricted painfully with the way the girl's demeanour of always-having-something-urgent-to-do reminded him of the early days of his and Anna's relationship, back when she had held that demanding position and it had been a struggle even to catch a moment to communicate through the illicit exchange of meaningful, but always necessarily covert, looks, or, on thrilling but regrettably rare occasions, even a chaste touch, always accompanied by a coy smile…He missed that: the intimacy; it being her duties rather than her reluctance keeping them apart – anything but this awful unwillingness on her part to even make eye contact.

With a considerable effort he lowered his voice, but his words were still forceful. "There's every need and I will continue to do so until you explain to me what went wrong between us."

He regretted his harsh tone as soon as he saw her shrink from him.

Anna's eyes were downcast and her defiant feigned confusion was not even remotely convincing, but acutely painful to witness. "Explain what?"

"My life is perfect and then in the space of one day it is nothing." Verbalising the sudden damage never stopped hurting. "To me that requires an explanation."

She flinched again but, before she could reply – if she had even been intending to – Lady Grantham's new maid appeared, clearly intending to speak to them. As he could hardly ignore the poor woman and the rather one-sided conversation was far too personal to risk her overhearing anyway, John turned resignedly to face her. He had to rack his brains for a second to recall her name – her recent arrival had occurred when he was absorbed in concern for Anna. Seizing on a vague recollection of her introducing herself in the Servants' Hall he greeted the seemingly quite pleasant new maid. "Good morning, Miss Baxter."

"Good morning Mr. Bates, Mrs Bates."

He glanced fleetingly at Anna who he had sensed freeze, and saw that she was wearing a very small, very forced smile. Apparently her habit of avoiding eyes was not reserved exclusively for him.

"I was wondering if you could help me?"

He tried to look willing to be helpful rather than as distracted as he actually felt. After all, the ladies' maid seemed nice and, although the issue may not be uppermost in his mind at the moment, there may come a time when being on the right side of Lady Grantham's maid for a change might come in useful. You never knew. Also, it wasn't easy being new to this house – he should know. As an unknown quantity, the other staff were initially often wary, if not outright hostile. A phrase Anna seemed to live by sprang to mind: _It costs nothing to be kind_.

"We will if we can." He spoke on behalf of Anna because he knew that she would ordinarily be only too eager to help, and because currently it seemed unlikely she would be volunteering a verbal response, not with him there to do so instead. For the past weeks she had spoken only when asked a direct question that made replying absolutely unavoidable.

"It's my sewing machine. I've no sockets in my bedroom and what with the sewing room being in the laundry wing, I wondered if Mrs Hughes might let me use it in the Servants' Hall?"

About to reply that he suspected the housekeeper wouldn't mind at all – though Mr Carson might – John noticed Anna turning away to draw in a trembling breath as if to calm herself, her hands reflexively almost clenching until she made what was evidently a conscious effort to relax her fingers. Concerned by such an obvious sign of distress, John replied more brusquely than he had meant to. "I should ask her, if I were you."

"Yes, of course. I'll do that." She left with a polite and somewhat apologetic smile, perhaps sensing she had interrupted something. John turned back to Anna.

His best chance of spending any sort of remotely positive time with Anna was if he stopped pushing and tried to initiate a more neutral, gentle conversation. He couldn't bear adding to her fear and unhappiness like this – not even to find out the cause.

"What do you make of her?" he asked.

The change of subject seemed to relax her ever so slightly and the relief seeped across into John's own stance.

"I think she's nice." It was a fairly non-committal response, but her sincerity was quintessentially Anna and he almost smiled.

"Which prompts me to wonder what she sees in our friend Thomas?" Under other circumstances John would have been genuinely curious to know the answer to this question. He liked to maintain a certain awareness of everything the under-butler did because, although ever since John had saved Thomas' job and future a grudging truce had existed between the two of them, he always struggled to shake the memory of those early years at Downton when O'Brien and Thomas seemed constantly to have some underhand plot afoot to lose him his job. Now, however, his intent was solely to try to engage Anna in a proper discussion that avoided the topic of what was hurting her entirely.

Where previously she would probably have launched into the conversation with a defence for both her fellow ladies' maid and the company she chose to keep, now she merely replied "You know the old saying, there's nowt so queer as folk." But it had some of her old playfulness in it, and where she looked up at him at the end there was a hint of what could almost have been a smile on her lips. Before he could gather himself enough to return it, it had passed – morphing into what was clearly the supressed urge to cry and leaving him wondering whether its presence – a glimpse of the old Anna – was merely wishful thinking on his part.

"We'll miss breakfast if we're not careful." She had swallowed her voice so much he barely caught the words. Her eyes were downcast again, but he had seen them when she looked at him and they were dull enough, brittle enough that it had dragged the breath from his lungs like a punch to the gut. The painstaking care she took not to brush against him as she passed twisted hard inside him and he set his face against letting it show, left standing uselessly at the foot of the stairs – biting back the urge to point out that it didn't matter if they missed breakfast as she had not, to his knowledge, eaten any since it – whatever 'it' was – happened.

* * *

Anna sat at the table with her hands twisting convulsively in her lap. Mr Carson, Mrs Patmore and Mrs Hughes were discussing something to do with Alfred being taught to cook by the kitchen maids, but she was barely able to follow even this simple conversation thread – all her efforts focused on not vomiting. The smell of the breakfast went straight to the back of her throat and it was everything she could do to resist the urge the gag.

John's eyes were on her as she pushed the food around her plate and cut it up into smaller pieces, attempting to make it look like she had eaten some in order to spare Daisy's feelings and her husband's worry. It wasn't that she wasn't hungry – she was – but it was as if, ever since _that night_ her throat had closed up, barring entrance to her stomach. It was frustrating, but more than that it was frightening. The rate at which she was losing weight was scaring Anna – the idea of becoming weaker, more easily overpowered…but there seemed to be nothing she could do; her body once again out of her control _Don't think don't think don't think_.

She had rarely been more relieved when Lady Mary rang.

* * *

Elsie watched Miss Baxter work on the sewing machine with no small degree of awe – though she was careful to keep how impressed she was carefully concealed; it wouldn't do for her to appear as giddy as Daisy, although the rate at which these new-fangled devices seemed to develop was rather thrilling. A machine that did the mending for you, whatever next?

And yet…where would it all end? The part of her mind that spoke with the dulcet tones of Mr Carson or dire warnings of Mrs Patmore murmured that it was developments like these that were ushering in the end of service. While people were needed to do hard, menial tasks the aristocracy would always employ servants; but in this fast-moving new age where technology seemed to be taking over from every angle, she worried what was to become of them all when they became expendable – surplus to requirements. If a machine could do the mending, then maybe a machine was coming that could make the beds. What would happen to the once relied on, suddenly replaced housemaids then? Labour saving was all very well, but they'd all be out of a job if things carried on like this. She liked to think of herself as progressive and open-minded – certainly she was by no means as fossilised as Mr Carson – but even she, like all of her generation she imagined, sometimes felt as though the century had moved on without her.

She was jolted out of her pensive reverie by the arrival of Anna. Her girl looked more beaten down than ever and Elsie was harshly reminded that there were far bigger worries in the present than the uncertainty of the future could hope to compete with. Mr Bates and Thomas had turned too and the former's determinedly warm greeting sent a pang through her heart. "Anna!"

"I've forgotten something." Anna replied blankly, not even attempting to fabricate a more convincing excuse as she turned on her heel and left the way she had just come. Thomas smirked at this display of what he had disparagingly termed 'trouble in paradise' the other day. Elsie felt a startling flash of rage. It was all she could do not to slap the sneer off his face and had to remind herself that he did not know the reason for the underlying tension between the Bateses. She knew him well enough to be sure that, in spite of the malicious streak that was always as the fore where Mr Bates was concerned, he would not have been so snide had he known the truth. Thomas cared about Anna - whatever he might assert to the contrary - as did everyone downstairs. Though none nearly as much as her husband, of course, who looked nothing short of crushed in the wake of yet another rejection.

"You must forgive me, Mr Bates. I'm afraid I'm keeping Anna too busy." The excuse sounded almost as weak as Anna's own and, although he looked faintly grateful for her compassion, Mr Bates didn't appear to be the slightest bit mollified. The misery Anna was causing the poor man could not go on. Elsie left the room with the intention of catching up with and confronting her about it.

Anna was walking away from her down the passageway, towards the shadows it disappeared into at the end. Her girl looked so fragile in that moment, her posture aged thirty years in a matter of weeks – bowed by fear and pain and secrecy - her dress hanging off her worryingly, that Elsie's voice broke on her harsh whisper of Anna's name.

Anna turned with a sort of defeated resignation and walked slowly back towards her, giving Elsie a chance to study her face. It bore little resemblance to the radiant visage of less than two months earlier. Haunted eyes sunken into a hollow face – storm clouds gathered where stubbornly blue skies had been. Twenty-two years of memories in front of her: _A fourteen-year-old, stricken silent and no one ever really knew why, but resolutely diligent in her efforts – perhaps slightly more intriguing than some of the girls, bringing out Elsie's protective instincts maybe slightly more, but just another housemaid; a bright, beautiful young woman who – rather like Lady Sybil - could light up a day with the glow of her sweet spirit and the reach of her kindness; watching with a maternal mixture of wariness and pride as her girl pushed through every barrier, every obstacle (and there were so many) to the unconventional but irrepressible love she and Mr Bates shared; witnessing it blossom into something irreplaceably precious under Anna's unerring devotion and determination as her girl made all the first moves, broke all the rules, to be with the man she loved; wondering when Anna had gone from a girl to her girl quite as much as she wondered when she had gone from Anna Smith to Anna Bates – the reality that she was far more to Elsie now than a housemaid; holding her through her darkest hour, helplessly willing the sorrow that stalked her surrogate daughter to lift; the more than deserved haven the Bateses had finally been able to carve out for their love_ …Now this. A flower in bloom, uprooted and discarded not thoughtlessly, or carelessly, but with a deliberate intent that made Elsie want to kill.

Beyond the initial numb disbelief that had eventually given way to almost suffocating sadness, she felt rage. Rage at what had been done to her girl – at what that man had done. The damage went beyond the lingering marks marring her face, or the torn dress Elsie had burned and the fact that Anna was once again sleeping down the hall from her; beyond even emotional impacts she wouldn't insult Anna by presuming to understand. Something fundamental had broken in her girl.

The sick fury clawed up in her chest like a scalded cat. How dare he! He had desecrated one the purest hearts Elsie had ever known, betrayed Anna's hopelessly vulnerable instinct to trust in spite of all she had been through up to that point, and it made her sick: with anger and the terrible responsibility of handling this alone.

Maybe Anna never would be quite the same again, maybe things had been irrevocably changed during that concert, but Elsie Hughes would be damned if she was going to give her girl up without a fight. There was a hell of a repair job ahead of her – it was going to take more than patches or glue to mend a seemingly broken spirit - and if she was sure of anything anymore it was that she could not do this alone.

Anna needed Mr Bates. Of that, she was certain; meaning that he needed to know what had happened. Her girl had fought so hard, for so long, for a chance at happiness; now it was their time to claim it back for her. Anna needed Mr Bates by her side – just as she had been unfailingly by his – as she struggled through a murder trial of her own, where the victim was her heart and Elsie had a dark fancy what she would like to sentence the defendant to.

Anna had reached her, painfully slowly, but wouldn't look up.

"I don't know why you must be so hard on Mr Bates," Elsie began.

Beneath the layer of numbness that had recently descended, detaching her from the bubbling pressure building just below the surface and preventing feelings showing on her stiff face, Anna felt the stirrings of anger. It wasn't like she wanted to be a cause of distress for John! Didn't Mrs Hughes see how it was tearing Anna apart a little more every time her words produced that flash of hurt? Couldn't she understand? In order to protect him she had to be hard, and never mind how guilty it made her feel so long as her husband was safe. She would bear any torture in the world if it would spare him the truth.

Anger and resentment was there, and yet she did not feel it – not really. This frightened her almost out of her wits and yet, even that, she couldn't feel. It was as though she had experienced so many emotions that her body had reached saturation point and shut down, incapable of taking any more. For the first time she understood what her mother must have been feeling in those weeks and years after her father had died: like everything was being experienced through a warping barrier of water, slowing the impact and disconnecting her delayed reactions from her body; even as she survived a pain that went on and on without end, that she couldn't imagine learning to live with.

The difference was that, for a long time, her mother had shut down even from really caring about her daughters – gone wilfully blind to continue not noticing what was happening to Flora. It wasn't that Anna blamed her – she didn't, or, if she did, it was in a way more sad than angry – but she knew she could never close down her own heart like that, however much she might sometimes wish she could. Emotions regarding herself may be being received like a blast from the delayed action grenade she had read about 'The Black Hand Gang' using in the papers just before war was declared, but Anna was incapable of slowing her lifeblood: her love for John. It pulsed in her – its tempo a constant reminder of why she survived, why she forced on through the fog of numbness swirling in the dark all around, why she pushed on even as her foot slipped on the cliff's edge. _For John. For John. For John_.

She endured for John because nothing – not this, not _him_ \- could lessen how she loved him. She would sacrifice anything for him – her life, without a second thought, but more than that. Sometimes there was a greater sacrifice to give than dying for someone. Living for them. Anna forced herself to keep living, when she desired nothing more fervently than to die, because she had come so close to knowing what it was to lose John that she could never deliberately do that to him. Besides, how could she protect him if she was dead?

Mrs Hughes was continuing. "At least you know now there'll be no baby."

She said 'baby' with an uncomfortable hesitancy – lowering her voice as though it was a dirty word. The mere suggestion made Anna's stomach turn over, much as it had when Mrs Hughes first raised the issue, so much so that she held her breath to stop herself vomiting then and there. The brutal truth – hitting her with the force of _his_ sudden fist – that she could have ended up bearing _his_ child, something conceived in cruel minutes of horror and violation, when her and John had been trying for a baby in vain for months…The concept of a baby, which seemingly could not be begotten of their love, being the result of _that night_ \- of _him_...The corruption soiling her skin, permanently tarnishing her soul, intensified, until Anna knew that she would need scalding water to peel the flesh from her bones, and to claw with ragged nails (from where she had scrabbled hopelessly on the table- _Don't!)_ at the innermost private places in her body - that no longer belonged to her - until she was so damaged at her own hand that no one could destroy her further, that no one's touch but her own could remain; and still the filth of her shame would never be cleansed. She was spoiled and she could never be unspoiled.

All behind carefully shuttered eyelids, an expression of blank. Repressing her primal horror at Mrs Hughes' suggestion of what could have happened, Anna forced a monosyllabic reply – that sounded in her own ears as though it had been swallowed along with the desire to retch. "No."

"Then can't you start to get past it and tell him - something?"

Elsie regretted the words as soon as she had spoken them. Yet again, her phrasing was clumsy, insensitive. She expected – maybe even hoped – Anna would be offended by her blatant ignorance, but her girl's face remained chillingly impassive as she replied. There was a dull, matter-of-fact air to her words that made them seem practised; almost as though she had had this argument already – and perhaps, inside that head, she had.

"He'd know if it wasn't the truth."

Elsie wanted to scream _'No more lies, please!'_ That hadn't been even slightly how she had meant for Anna to construe her words. The last thing she wanted was for her to tell her husband any more lies in this insane, misguided attempt to protect him. She had meant: _tell him some part of what occurred – as much as you can – so he's no totally in the dark. Let him help you._

It was a pity that Mr Bates – who Anna was so convinced would know a lie – couldn't use that alleged innate perceptiveness to find out the horrifying truth and alleviate some of the overwhelming responsibility Elsie felt for Anna's welfare, maybe even her life.

Talking to her girl these days made Elsie feel like she was a witness for the prosecution again – unable to convey what she meant and everything coming out tangled up wrong until her words were twisted to the point where she didn't even recognise them as her own; all the while the knowledge that she was failing Anna lain across her shoulders, her heart.

"He sees through me. He can read me like a book."

 _Oh God, Anna, if only I could._ John had only caught the last few words of what was obviously a hushed argument between Mrs Hughes and Anna. He had agonised over following the housekeeper, but in the end his burning need to know how to help Anna had won out over respect for her privacy – even as he loathed himself, with a self-disgust that crawled under his skin, for eavesdropping on his wife.

Mrs Hughes echoed his thoughts. "I wish he could read you and bring you out of this – veil of shadows! Don't you want to be honest with him?"

John pressed his back into the wall, holding his cane slightly above the ground to ensure it wouldn't tap and give him away, and felt his breath tighten at the back of his throat as he listened silently for Anna's reply.

"Of course I do! But I know him, and know what he'd do," her low voice was rising to a note of hysteria. Did she honestly fear his reaction to her secret so much? There was a certainty, and a dread, in Anna's voice that made John hate himself for what he was clearly unintentionally doing to her. Her next words brought him up short in bafflement. "And I can't risk his future!" What on earth did she think he would do if he found out, that it would jeopardise his future? He wasn't that volatile was he? That he couldn't be trusted with the truth?

Mrs Hughes' voice was saddened but there was a resignation in her tone John certainly did not feel. "Well…it's your secret, and not mine…but I think it's a mistake."

Anna's footsteps were so light that he would not have heard her walk away if his ears hadn't been so attuned to her every sound. He wanted to go after her; to tell her she didn't have to fear his reaction no matter what it was she was keeping from him - he would never never do anything to hurt her, nor let anyone else do so; never jeopardise what their life together had been – she could trust him. She didn't even have to tell him, if she didn't want to, if she still felt she couldn't (though, God, how he hated that she felt that way), if only she would let him support her, take her burden on himself, make the shadows killing her light go away.

He would. He would get through to Anna, prove to her she could trust him, prove that his love was without conditions. And he would do it soon. He wasn't sure how much more of this either of them could take.


	4. Chapter 4

**Trigger Warnings: Aftermath of rape, implied denial of pregnancy as a result of rape, depression, character is triggered, flashbacks, implied child [sexual] abuse, internalised victim blaming.**

 _A/N: So sorry it's late! School and personal life have both been more than a little hectic. Chapter 4! Thank you so much to everyone still reading – and especially to Awesomegreentie and Nurs3Girl who have continued to review each chapter, it makes such a difference and I really appreciate the feedback :). I feel like I should warn people/make it clear now that this is not going to follow canon – it is an AU – so this chapter won't pan out like Episode 5. I promise, promise, solemnly swear there will be a Banna reunion eventually…but it's not yet and, actually, it's not for a while; please bear with me, I do have a plan and a plot. Little bit of Thomas this chapter – he will be in it quite a lot because I love him and I was always sad there wasn't more of an exploration of his relationship with Anna on the show (I feel like there was a lot of potential for/implicit friendship and it was a shame we didn't ever really get to see that developed). Thank you for reading!_

 **Chapter 4 – Wishing I could make it go away**

 ** _Tell me how I hurt you; tell me what you need; wishing I could make it go away…_**

John stood in the corner of the kitchen, trying to be pleased for Alfred, trying to think about anything other than Anna's obvious fear – of him? For him? Both? He couldn't tell – he wasn't sure of anything anymore; anything except that she was frightened and silent and it was his fault.

"They don't give you much time!" Mrs Patmore exclaimed, brandishing a letter John gathered was from The Ritz. She turned it over to peer at the envelope and huffed out an exasperated breath "This was posted ten days ago; it must have got lost!"

Poor Alfred looked like he was about to be sick with nerves and the ruffled cook did not seem to be helping. Taking pity on the lad, John tried to inject his reassurance with enough sincerity to at least sound genuine, even as Anna's words pressed on the corners of his brain ' _I know him, and know what he'd do…'_

"He'll be fine. He knows his stuff." It sounded vague at best, but Mrs Patmore seized gratefully on his confidence.

"'Course he does. Doesn't he Daisy?"

"He does, yeah."

"What's this?" Anna asked quietly from the doorway behind him. Turning, he saw that she was stood there uncomfortably, looking tentative – almost as though questioning her right to be occupying the space; but at least she had volunteered a question, it was the first time John had heard her speak unnecessarily in weeks. She shifted nervously under his gaze, her eyes not downcast but not actually looking at anyone – and certainly not at him – either. Trying desperately to ensure his response was casual, gentle, so as not to close off the potential for conversation by putting any pressure on her, John replied "Alfred's got his test at The Ritz." It seemed like such an inane thing to be discussing – if you could call a question and an answer a discussion – when they had barely spoken in over a month (though not for lack of trying on John's part), but anything that got Anna to spend more than a few seconds in the same room as him had to be a good thing...And when her shadowed eyes lit up fractionally as she looked, fleetingly, genuinely pleased for Alfred, it suddenly seemed like the best topic of conversation imaginable.

"I'm happy for you, Alfred." She sounded it too, just about - her voice not quite so lifeless, an attempt at a smile twitching the corners of her mouth. That was Anna all over, that was: able to be glad for someone else – someone she didn't even know that well, really – in the midst of whatever it was that had shrouded her in shadows and pain and _fear,_ driving her from their home and the love from between them.

He still didn't understand what could have happened. He had been so sure it was something he had done, some terrible unknown mistake he had made…but now he wasn't so certain. When Anna was speaking to Mrs Hughes, she had sounded terrified of what he would do if he found out – the mere thought made him burn with the sickness of his own self-loathing – but that very much suggested it was something he didn't know about, and therefore not something he had done. But if not his fault, then what? Who? She had been hurt somehow, that was undeniable, and she feared his reaction if he found out the truth. Anna surely couldn't imagine he would, could ever, be angry with her, did she? There was nothing on Earth-

"Anna-" John began, almost before making a conscious decision to speak. He was possessed by an urgent, painful need to reassure her that no matter what it was she was keeping from him, he would be here – trying to be at her side, trying to help her in whatever way she needed. He wouldn't ever be angry, not with her, and he wouldn't do anything that frightened her. He wouldn't do whatever it was she thought – feared – he would…He regretted addressing her so directly as soon as she tensed. Her head had automatically briefly whipped up at his voice, and as her eyes met his he almost recoiled from the wealth of controlled pain, and the flash of raw fear, he saw in them. She looked trapped and the impulse to step away and give her as much space as possible to make that look go away pulled taut against aching to hold her and protect her from – _what?_

She jumped at the echo of the gong and he flinched in sympathy.

"That's the gong." Anna's voice was flat and empty again, an emotionless monotone belied by his glimpse of her hauntingly hurt eyes. She turned on her heel and left hastily. To his embarrassment and slight surprise John felt tears swell against the inside of his throat. He wasn't sure why, as it was hardly the first time he had been rebuffed by her like that – the past weeks had in fact been nothing but such rejections. He grimaced away his body's apparent desire to cry in the kitchens; evidently not concealing his emotions particularly successfully as Mrs Patmore, looking anxious, offered would-be consolingly, "I shouldn't worry Mr Bates. She's got ever such a lot on her plate." If only he knew what, perhaps he wouldn't need to worry quite so much. Or at the very least he would know exactly why he was worrying. As it was, the shrill pitch of his anxiety about Anna's strange, prolonged but still unexplained, behaviour was like a constant whine in his head and in his heart.

Affording the well-meaning cook his best attempt at a genuine smile of gratitude John replied heavily "Haven't we all."

* * *

Mary gripped her teacup slightly less carefully than the delicate porcelain probably necessitated, trying to summon the tact she so often lacked in order to tread carefully around Anna. She had been sad and all but silent for weeks now and Mary may still not know why, but she certainly meant to find out.

"Is it true you've moved into the house again? Mrs Hughes said so." She had been taken aback and more than a little aghast when the housekeeper told her; it seemed irrevocable somehow – proof that Anna was more than a bit down, that something had happened to upset her…not that that hadn't already been evident, but Anna moving away from Bates made it undeniable, final. When she had first noticed Anna's changed demeanour, Mary had wondered if perhaps the couple had had a falling out of some sort, had hoped it would resolve itself naturally in time; but as the weeks passed and Anna remained distant and desolate looking, it became obvious that Bates was more bewildered and worried than any of them – and no better informed.

Anna had finished laying out the purple dress and Mary was sure that she was only smoothing out non-existent creases as a pretext for not looking up when she replied. "It seemed easier when I was looking after Her Ladyship as well as you." Apparently no longer able to pretend there was anything more to be done to the garment, she turned away to straighten something on the dressing table unnecessarily.

"But she has her own maid now." Mary pushed. "Why not go back to the cottage?" _Or why not tell me why not?_

She shrugged slightly. "I haven't got round to it."

The Anna Mary knew - the Anna who had used every half day, every spare bit of time, to either make the journey to York to visit Bates in prison, or else pursue another vague lead which came to nothing in her quest to prove the innocence she was so certain of; the Anna who had waited years to be with her beloved husband and years before that to marry him; the Anna she could still hear telling her with soft sad surety that the departure of Bates did mean she couldn't be happy, that she loved him more than anything in the world – that woman would never have 'not got round to' returning to the home and life she had fought so long and hard for, would never have left it in the first place. Something was very wrong with Anna and nobody – except perhaps Mrs Hughes - seemed to know what it was. And there was no chance of getting an answer out of the housekeeper. Mary had tried, going so far as to pull rank in a way that made her despise herself just slightly, but the woman had not budged on her insistence that she didn't know. Mary was fairly certain it was a lie, but the knowledge didn't get her any closer to the truth; nor any closer to helping Anna: who had helped her so many times – going far above and beyond the duties of a maid or even what could reasonably be expected of a close friend; who had kept so many of Mary's secrets, but wouldn't entrust her with whatever it was that was tearing her up inside. Secrets could be poison, Mary knew. They burrowed into your flesh and rotted you apart bit by bit, ruining you without anyone knowing – or else ruining you with the fact that everyone knew…She understood Anna's reluctance to reveal whatever it was that had happened, maybe better than anyone else could, but it didn't stop her wishing her friend felt able to confide in her. She said as much. "Anna, if you're in difficulties I wish you'd tell me."

The reply was a little too quick, the shake of her head a little too decisive. Only someone experienced at lying herself would have noticed it. "I'm not milady – honestly." The last qualification further gave her away. No one being honest felt the need to say 'honestly'.

Mary sighed. She didn't want to press and make things worse – familiar as she was with feeling like your stiff composure was the only thing stopping you shattering into fragments on the floor. She sensed the fragility of Anna's control, like a membrane stretched over obvious but unreachable, untouchable, unknowable pain that bubbled and threatened to break through. Anna's tangible emotions felt at once foreign and familiar. She recognised the weight of a throbbing confession you couldn't tell, but not the expression of the pain. It was the sort of thing that would have made her cold and harsh and spiteful for days and then burst out of her in a storm of ugly tears – as Pamuk had, as Matthew had…Anna's sadness was quieter, subtler, but suffocating. Mary hoped she could be freed from it before it stifled her.

She had only just woken up but suddenly she was terribly tired.

* * *

Anna determinedly didn't look up as the Boot Room door opened. It wasn't _him –_ couldn't be _him. He_ wasn't here. The tap of John's cane, the familiar footfalls, the pattern of his breathing that she would have recognised anywhere, slowed her panicking heart and stopped it trying to escape from her chest with a band of tension and nerves that tightened across her ribcage as the damp pressure of her deception settled heavily onto her lungs once more.

She resolutely kept scrubbing the shoe, refusing to falter, forcing herself to focus on the mundane task – needing an excuse not to look at John, trying to convince herself that the powerful smell of boot polish didn't leave an aftertaste of fear in her mouth and that she couldn't hear her own hoarse screams ringing in her ears. It was a room. Only a room. One she had been in hundreds of times over her years at Downton.

John was next to her – _too close, too close –_ holding a pair of Lord Grantham's black boots that didn't look like they needed polishing any more than Lady Mary's heels in front of her had. Had he come in only to speak to her? Her knuckles were white on the shoe. She wondered absently how hard she would have to grip onto the present for the bone to push through her translucent skin and whether the pain would be enough to temporarily drive out the smothering memory of being held down on this table, _the unbreakable grip on her wrists above her head. Fighting more viciously than she'd ever dreamt she could, struggling pointlessly to kick with his knee pressing onto her thigh. Screaming, past the point where her insufficient voice gave out, for John, for Flora, for someone – anyone; for the blade she'd lashed out with in the inexpert clumsy panic of a terrified child who understood only too well what would happen – what was happening now- Don't. think._

"It's strange, standing here next to you in silence."

Anna couldn't have replied even if she wanted to, blinking the memories from her eyes and locking the urge to scream tightly in the space between her lungs and her heart. _Please just leave. I can't do this right now. I can't protect you, not here – where I was too weak to even protect myself._ His body was too close to hers; too close when she was so soiled; too close when the phantom touch of ruthlessly, impossibly strong fingers still bruised her arms.

"Because I love you," No. He mustn't love her anymore. She had pushed him away for months, been cold and distant and even cruel, to stop him loving her; to stop him being tainted by her shame. And to stop him being hurt by his own love. She knew only too well what John would do to protect her – what people would do to protect someone they loved. The purpling bruise smudged along Flora's cheekbone, the glimpse of similar marks on her legs when she changed, ghosted across Anna's vision; and something else too, a flicker of dark blood staining childish hands – a half-remembered flash of a memory that wasn't hers, that didn't fit…

John mustn't love her; mustn't know how much she loved him and always would. She had to make him stop loving her, so that he would be safe. _For John. For John. For John._

"And I want to find out why you don't love me anymore." This was what she had wanted – no, needed – him to think, wasn't it? So why did her mind recoil from his words as though they were a white hot brand scarring her heart? Anna had done everything she could to push John away, to make him think she didn't care anymore, in the grim hope that she could make him hate her, so that her ruin wouldn't spill over to hurt him too…and yet it was still totally incomprehensible that he could ever imagine she didn't love him. How could he believe that? And how – why – did he still love her? What more could she - what else would she have to - do to protect him, as she had failed to protect Flora – her last reckless protector?

Out of nowhere, a flood of sobs surged up through the muting bind of the numbness that had become Anna's new normal in so short an endless time. She bit down hard and swallowed them back, stamping ruthlessly on the screaming ache in her chest, but still the tears filled her eyes and blurred her vision until she couldn't see the shoes her hands had unconsciously stilled on. All her efforts were focused onto not allowing the brittle dam to break, leaving her unable to stop her bottom lip trembling uncontrollably. How could John believe she didn't love him? How could she make him stop loving her? How could either of them survive like this?

She had never wanted to tell him the truth – her whole, ugly truth – more; to be held, and comforted and collapse into John, as she had needed to from the second _it_ happened…Anna knew he wouldn't blame her, however much she deserved it; that wasn't the issue. The issue was that his sense of honour would tie him to a soiled wife when he deserved so much better; that she would go rigid the second he tried to touch her; and that he would kill _him –_ and hang for it, in some misguided attempt to avenge or protect her.

Silent suffering was a small price to pay for John's life.

He was still speaking and now his voice, although quiet, was bitter. "You'd think we could talk about it, but apparently not." The heartbreak she was causing him, inherent in the veiled accusation, burst against the backs of her eyes and the words that rose to her lips, to refute all and any of it - that talking was possible here, that anything could stop her loving him – to offer that repeated, empty, meaningless insistence that nothing was wrong – were a low cry. "But I don't-!"

Cutting herself off with a deep stab of breath, Anna used every scrap of strength and will she had left to pull the ragged remnants of her composure back across her raw voice. So long – she had kept him safe for so long. She refused to fall now. It didn't matter how much she hurt him if only he would be safe – the weight of his hurt was her burden to bear, her punishment. _Better a broken heart than a broken neck._ Breath. No feeling, no emotion; summon the numb back to deaden her tone. "I'm going into Ripon this afternoon to get some things for Lady Mary." Anywhere to get away from what she was doing to her husband. "If they miss me, I'll be back before the gong."

Putting the shoes hastily aside, she left as quickly as she could; but John's flat reply pulled her up short just outside the doorway.

"At least I know you'll be back before the gong."

Forcing the bones of her face to tighten and shift to contain the throbbing sting of that justified distrust, Anna carried on walking.

* * *

"Her Ladyship's on her way down." Thomas informed Mrs Patmore. He watched her bustle out before turning back to Phyllis, allowing a slight smirk to curve his lips as he twirled his half-smoked cigarette idly between his fingers. "That's another one roped to the chariot."

Her eyes as she looked back at him shared none of his satisfaction. She asked, low and hard, "I'm grateful for this job Thomas, and we both know why; but what's it all about?"

The truth was, it was mostly about having someone downstairs who didn't look at him with disgust or dislike. It was about having an acquaintance – maybe eventually even a friend – from whom he didn't have to hide because she already knew everything and didn't seem to judge him for it. It was about having a piece of his past that didn't hate him in this house that did; having someone who knew what it was to be as vulnerable as he was; and maybe partly – though he could barely stand to acknowledge the sentimental weakness – it was because every time he looked at Maggie's old friend he thought of her, the sister who was the only part of his childhood he missed.

Of course, it didn't hurt that Phyllis' vulnerability kept her comfortably under his thumb, where she could keep him informed and which put him – for once – in the reassuring position of being firmly in control of something. Thomas kept his expression cool as he replied smoothly "Well there's going to be changes at Downton, there's bound to be." A long drag on the cigarette, the relaxing sensation of smoke filling his lungs. He exhaled nonchalantly.

"I'm sure." Her face impassive, her reply deliberately obtuse. He felt the beginnings of irritation.

"So I want to know about any plans upstairs. Any detail. No matter how small." He could get a lot from something that might mean nothing to a casual observer – he prided himself on it. "Do you understand?"

"Did other ladies' maid's keep you informed?" He didn't really see what difference it made, but conceded that it wasn't an unreasonable question. He could have dismissed Phyllis' nosiness quite easily, but it was pleasant to have someone to just talk with – even if there was a slight undertone of tension to their conversation.

"Miss O'Brien, yes. But we fell out." The understatement prickled the old bitterness. Their 'falling out' had almost landed him in prison…if not for Bates…– and how he loathed his indebtedness there.

"What about Mrs Bates?" Phyllis asked shrewdly. He sensed the question had been waiting to be asked for a while. "Is she an enemy? She knows what's going on."

She did at that; much good though it seemed to do her. "No." he replied, decisively but thoughtfully. Anna was one of the very few people below stairs – at Downton in general in fact – that he did not, and never had, considered an enemy. "She's not an enemy."

He tried to imagine getting her to spy on upstairs for him – on her precious Lady Mary. He could just picture how well that conversation would go. Anna had a knack like no one else for making him feel small and almost ashamed, with her disappointment juxtaposed with that irritating, endearing lack of condemnation. The only times she had ever properly lost her temper with him had been when he had been doing his best to lose Bates his job in the man's early years at Downton. Even then it had always seemed to be O'Brien she really despised – he could still remember her uncharacteristically snapping that 'the trick of business is to mind your own' after a particularly prying question. Somewhat against his will he half-smiled fondly. "But she's incorruptible." He dismissively stubbed his cigarette out on the table, not caring what Mr Carson would say about the burn mark he was probably leaving. "So we have nothing in common."

"She's also silent." Phyllis retorted. "I don't think I've had four words out of her since I arrived."

And that wasn't like Anna at all. If there was anyone at Downton Thomas would have expected to be kind and welcoming to a new ladies' maid, it was her – she always had been before. Maybe Miss O'Brien followed by Edna had put her off, neither of them had exactly made life easy for her – admittedly no thanks to him. It didn't seem very likely though, that she, of all people, would hold past experiences against a newcomer.

But it wasn't only Phyllis Anna had been quiet with lately, was it? She had barely spoken since that morning she came into breakfast with a bruised face and blatant lie accompanying on her lips. Fell and hit her head – What? In three different places? Thomas was a trained nurse; he didn't buy her feeble excuse for a second; had been ashamed of not having the guts to call her out on it outright.

That had been weeks ago: weeks of Anna being quiet and closed off. And he noticed other things in that time - after all these years of spying and plotting it was a carefully honed skill. He was not oblivious to the sudden distance that had sprung up between Anna and Bates – Anna and everyone, for that matter… He knew she had moved back into the Abbey after Edna left – had she returned to the cottage now? He wasn't sure.

She was jumpy and skittish too. The other day he's asked her something without announcing his presence first and she'd flinched so hard even Alfred had noticed. If Thomas hadn't known better – and the distrustful, antagonistic part of him still half-suspected this – he would have thought Bates had got violent with her. But the reasonable voice in his head, which in fact sounded oddly like Anna, forced him to admit that while he disliked the valet – and knew him to be fully capable of getting rough when he felt the situation warranted it [Thomas still hadn't forgotten being slammed into a wall, though he had sneered it off at the time] – it was simply not in the man's gratingly gallant nature to harm a woman; much less Anna. Whatever else Thomas felt about them, he had to concede their deep love for each other. Except, apparently not anymore.

He'd not properly looked at the picture as a whole until Phyllis pointed it out, absorbed in his attempts at information gathering from upstairs, but now he couldn't understand how he hadn't seen it before. Something had happened to Anna. The thought bothered Thomas far more than he would have anticipated.

But he only said, "Just get them all to trust you. And tell you everything." No need to let Phyllis see his weakness.

* * *

There was a knock on her door and Elsie sucked a breath in even though she had been expecting it. Mr Bates had caught her earlier in the afternoon to ask her if they could speak in private and she had told him to come to her sitting room when he got the chance. She suspected, with a sinking certainty, that she knew what this was going to be about – what he would ask, the answers he needed and deserved but which she could not give him…

Resignedly, she laid her pen down as the door opened and Mr Bates entered. Getting a proper look at him, he appeared nearly as exhausted and shattered as Anna; the toll the situation – as Elsie had come to euphemise it in her mind – was taking on him obvious in the sleepless nights imprinted under his eyes, the pain etching lines of strain into his face that had not been there two months previously.

"It's good of you, to let me disturb your afternoon."

Not quite ready to start this conversation – would she ever be ready? – she wordlessly offered him a seat, appreciating his courtesy but not seeing the point of the smoke-screen of pleasantries when they both knew what this was about. Anna hung in the air between them.

Mr Bates seemed to agree, because resting his cane against the arm of the chair he went straight to the point. "You see, I have to get to the bottom of what's troubling me and I believe you can help me." His tone could almost have been light, contemplative, if not for the undercurrent of tension that ran like a botched seam through the middle of the scene.

"I doubt that." And she did. This, at least, was true – probably the only honest thing she would be able to say to the poor man. She couldn't help him without betraying Anna's precarious trust. Anna who she couldn't stop seeing in her mind's eye, bloody and terrified as she had been the night Elsie found her cowering in the corner of this room; the half-crazed look her girl had worn when she begged her for help, when Elsie recklessly promised to keep her secret…though as much as she had turned it over and over torturously in her mind, she still didn't see what else she could have done.

"The thing is, I know you can. I heard you question Anna about why she was being so hard one me…"

He had heard that? That was not how she would have wished him to find anything out – though she suspected her earlier conversation with Anna had been oblique enough that though it may have added to his worries, it surely hadn't aided his understanding. And nor would she enlighten him now. Elsie tried for evasive. "But that doesn't mean-"

He cut across her and now his voice was hard with intensity. "Yes. It does. You know what this is about, and you believe she should have told me." No room for denial there without being guilty of an outright lie.

"Well, I admit, I think she should have; but it is not for me to." Elsie wouldn't override Anna's wishes – Anna's pleas – however misguided she believed them to be. Her girl's fears may be unfounded, but it wasn't Elsie's place to take such a decision out of her hands.

"Then I can't stay here." His voice was heavy yet matter-of-fact. Elsie had been prepared for many different possible reactions – but not that. She couldn't quite believe what she was hearing.

"What?" Flabbergasted.

"I have been happy in this house. Happier than I had any right to be." His bitter self-deprecation was an eerie echo of his wife's. "But that only makes my present situation all the harder to bear."

Her voice wobbled on the shaky exhale. "I can imagine-"

"Can you?" His voice was slightly thick. She thought maybe there was some anger there too and she couldn't pretend it was unwarranted. "Can you, Mrs Hughes? Because if you can, you will know why I have to leave here." The beginnings of panic caught on her collarbones. "My wife no longer loves me." Had an untruer word ever been spoken? Elsie bit her lip against the urge to gasp an instant denial of his statement. No one loved anyone as Anna loved Mr Bates; except possibly as he loved her. She had borne first-hand witness to that love tearing her girl apart more than once – too powerful for such a slight body to bear. _Anna in the courtyard years earlier, gulping ragged sobs of cold night air, and though the then housemaid couldn't get coherent words out, Elsie had overheard enough from listening at the grating of her own sitting room to piece together what must have happened. Anna shaking her head as though it could get rid of the tears, watching helplessly as her girl's face crumbled; crossing the barrier of professionalism once and for all to give the strong, broken woman something to cling to in the absence of her husband. Anna destroying herself, locking an incomprehensible horror up inside, to keep Mr Bates safe…_

"The sight of me is torture for her; which is torture for me." He took a deep breath, obviously steeling himself; so there was no interpreting his next words as an empty threat. "If you will not let me hear the truth, I will hand in my resignation now and be gone before she gets back."

Elsie shut her eyes as though it would lessen the pressure inside her skull. Now what? She still couldn't betray her girl; but she absolutely could not let Mr Bates leave. It would mark the end of Anna. Not for the first time - especially recently, especially in relation to the Bateses - Elsie had no idea what to do for the best.

Interpreting her silence, Mr Bates stood up slowly and strode to the door. "So be it." He said quietly. Finally.

She opened her eyes at the creak of hinges. She had to do something – had to try. "Wait." He did. Elsie sensed he had been willing her to stop him. He would have followed through and left if she hadn't – she was in no doubt about that. Mr Bates was not the kind of man who bluffed. But he didn't want to leave. The realisation gave her hope. "Where is Anna?"

"She had an errand in Ripon."

"It's not true." The low words came from a deep place in her heart belonging to her girl. She prayed Mr Bates could hear the certainty, the truth, of her statement – and that he would listen. "Anna loves you very, very much. And I think the pain of coming home to find you gone would finish her." Much though it was in many ways the very thing ripping Anna apart, Elsie was aware that, paradoxically, the need to protect Mr Bates was also the only thing holding her together: a purpose she had fixated on to give her a reason to stand resolute in the face of this storm's erosion of her spirit. She couldn't lose that. She wouldn't survive losing that. Elsie needed to find a way to make him stay. She hoped that what little of the truth she could give would be sufficient. She hadn't decided what she would do if it wasn't. "But I cannot tell you what you want to know; only Anna can do that."

"But she won't, Mrs Hughes. She can barely look at me." It was obvious what the words cost him.

"Not yet. Perhaps not for some time. But she needs you, Mr Bates. She must not – cannot – face this without you." She didn't know where these words were coming from; instinct, maybe.

"How can I help her if I don't know what has happened?" His voice very nearly cracked.

"You can be there for her, as you have been. But don't push her. Anna will tell you when she is ready." She still harboured hopes that this would happen; though her initial imaginings that it would happen soon - that Anna just needed a little time to process things by herself before going to her husband - had dwindled by the day.

Mr Bates had not sat back down but his hand had fallen from the doorknob. Elsie took this as a good sign and kept talking, imploring. "She is hurt, Mr Bates." Involuntarily her eyes flickered to the wall her girl had huddled against, trying to cover herself with the rags of her ripped dress. "More than you can imagine-"

"Yet you say you cannot tell me why?" His words were angry, but beneath that there was a sharp desperation.

"Because I made Anna a promise." She begged him to understand her predicament. "I will not break her trust. If you will only be patient and gentle, I believe Anna will come to you herself eventually; but you can't force this." He didn't speak. "You cannot leave. I honestly think losing you now would kill her." He looked dubious, torn, and so though she knew her next words were a low blow she said them anyway. "It almost killed her before, Mr Bates; you didn't watch her in the days after your trial. I don't want to think about what it would do to her now."

His face was tight with pain but Elsie knew that she had won when, clearly not trusting his voice, Mr Bates nodded slowly.

 _A/N: I know many people will probably hate the fact that John doesn't know and won't for some time. I'm not saying it pans out better with him kept in the dark, but it was really, really important to me that Mrs Hughes didn't take away Anna's control. Maybe it's my modern insight, but surely any handling of this kind of horrible situation has to have a fundamental basis of respect for the unalienable importance of consent – in all aspects of life? Anyway, hope you don't hate me too much for doing this. Please, please, please review. I am ridiculously, pathetically dependent on feedback._


	5. Chapter 5

**Trigger Warnings: Nightmares/flashbacks to very immediate aftermath of rape, implied pregnancy as a result of rape, implied child [sexual] abuse, self-harm (not cutting), internalised victim blaming, Green (I appreciate Green is not technically a trigger warning, but it felt like it needed to be warned for).**

 _A/N: Sorry it's late – I'm so crazily busy at the moment, but I really am trying to keep these updates frequent and reasonably regular. Thank you all so much for your feedback and reviews!_

More than one reviewer raised the issue of how/why John hasn't worked out what happened. It's a very good question and I think you made some highly valid points in your comments. However, I stand by the fact that I

 _don't_ _think he would have worked it out on his own and this is why:_

1\. _Sexual assault was not openly discussed in contemporary society. Where modern rape culture normalises and trivialises it, the 1920s largely ignored it. If/when it happened it was rarely acknowledged. The fact that it was even something that_ could _happen would have been so infrequently addressed (especially by/in front of men) that it's unlikely it would even really be on John's radar as a possibility._

2.

 _If he had encountered incidents of it before, it would likely have been mostly, if not entirely, during the Boer War and/or while in prison. Thus it's not something he would associate at all with what is, for all intents and purposes, their home. Up to this point, they have never had any reason to consider Downton anything other than totally safe. Anna literally only goes downstairs to the kitchen - of a house they both lived in for years and have worked in for much longer - and not for very long. What happens is unimaginable until it happens._

3. _As viewers, it's easy to forget that we have the benefit of an insight/hindsight John lacks. It's easy to say it was obvious WW1 (for example – sorry, wannabe historian) was coming once it was over and we knew what had happened …it was a lot less easy to see it coming at the time. A similar principle applies here. I, for one, didn't realise what was going to happen in Episode 3 until about halfway through the scene in the kitchen (tbh, until around the time Anna realises); although, when you rewatch the episode, all the foreshadowing is there and more than obvious from the very beginning._

4.

 _As MODERN viewers we see and identify the symptoms of a specific kind of trauma (very insightfully and empathetically portrayed by Jo) because our society/culture facilitates an awareness of what to look for and what certain things suggest/reveal. They are living in a time when shellshock (the prevalence of which post-trenches was really the origins of the acknowledgement of PTSD) was widely perceived as 'cowardice'. It's only too easy to underestimate how little anyone knew about mental health. The clues in Anna's obvious distress would not – maybe even_ could _not – add up to an answer for John. He has no reference/comparison point – the closest he would have come to seeing anything similar would have been war-related trauma in fellow soldiers and/or himself (and, ultimately, even that's not really that comparable)._

5. _He doesn't want to think it. Even considering all of the above points, I concede John could well have subconsciously suspected the truth. But the mind – as Anna will prove throughout this fic (she is in denial about more than one significant thing) – is very good at protecting itself from things too painful to process [at least until something forces an unavoidable confrontation with these repressed memories/realities]._

 _I hope that addresses the issue of John remaining in the dark. Feel free to please PM me or leave a review if you still feel that I am missing something/leaving a plot hole._

 _I would also like to make it clear that I do not think John is wrong/ can be blamed for pressing the issue with Anna and Mrs Hughes. As I was saying to my best friend: it's not wrong for him to ask the question, because he doesn't know the answer – he doesn't know what he's asking/ the nature of the information he is pushing for. He is just doing his best to support and help Anna (which is indeed very difficult without knowing what's happened). What was wrong, in my opinion, was Mrs Hughes – who was acutely aware of the nature of the information she was imparting – answering his question (and in so doing violating Anna's trust and taking the choice out of her hands). I know I've already made that last point several times in this fic – but I just wanted to clarify that I don't think John is in the wrong there._

 _Sorry for the rambling! Plot happens in this chapter! And we have a cover for the story – hope you like it (I thought it was identifiable and suitably grim, but hopefully not triggering)! Thank you very much for reading! Please, please review :)._

 **Chapter 5 – All Those Shadows  
  
** **_I feel the fear; I feel the shame; I know that I'm the one to blame._**

 _There was blood on her chemise. A stain that wouldn't come out. She could tell even without looking that no matter how much soap and scalding water and bleach she used it would remain irreversibly ruined. The damp fabric was sticky against her skin. Not that it mattered if there was a mark; everything she was wearing was torn beyond repair anyway. Her dress was in rags and her hands couldn't move to cover herself – the echo of_ his _crushing grip still pinioning them helplessly above her head. Her body was cold and heavy; pain pulsing only dully from the various places that had been struck – by the table, by_ his _fist -. The tightness underneath her ragged, shallow breaths and the niggling twinge in her ribs – a promise of pain - suggested at least one was probably broken. But the only bruise she could really feel wilting with an ache, insistent in its finality, was the small spot where the heel of a shoe – probably Lady Mary's – had been scraped down and dug hard into her thigh to force her legs open...Even the burn of that angry point diminished in comparison to the icy heat of crystal clear blind white agony too deep not deep enough inside her._

 _It was so quiet. Her heartbeat pounded unforgivingly in her ears; she could taste it in her mouth – metallic and hot and acrid. Seconds, minutes, lifetimes ago her own futilely frantic screams had rung around the room – her head – and the room was inside her head – it always would be, only ever this room – and she had willed, putting every fragment of it into her tearing voice, anybody to come, anybody at all, to stop_ him _, it. John, only upstairs, was impossibly far away. Another Anna's John. A different reality. Flora had seemed closer when she fought…part, as she was, as she had been, of this existence of pain and shame and fear and unanswered screams in the night. She had needed Flora, wanted Flora so badly, and even through the slow murder of her soul she had hated herself for wishing her sister into the middle of that horror. Hated herself, but screamed - for what she had lost and was losing - anyway. Cries for a ghost._ _Monsters were real; by any dark fairy tale's reckoning ghosts should have been too. As if it had ever worked that way._

 _She had screamed for someone to come, to find her, to know; even past the point of saving. Now silent. Now still, but for the uncontrolled shaking that had begun in her limbs. Unstoppable. Now nobody could know – nobody must ever find out. Silence – that was all this Anna had ever really known; unspeakable in Manchester, unspoken in Liverpool, concealed by indifferent industrial smog._

 _The air smelled like_ him. _She smelled like_ him. _And like Flora – blood and sweat and the cloying cling that had haunted her skin and baffled Little Anna. It brought tears of terror and memory to her temples as they trickled into her hair from the corners of her eyes. Strange that she hadn't cried – screamed, but not wept – in front of_ him _. Flora hadn't ever cried…damp on the top of Anna's head in bed at night; voices whipped away by the storm pounding the rooftops of the tenements around them as rain streamed down Flora's cheeks; droplets splashing totally silently onto calloused hands cradling a distended stomach by the feeble half-light of a streetlamp…He_ _hadn't seen Flora cry; Anna hadn't let_ him _see her cry. It was all she had. All that was still hers._

 _She wasn't her own anymore –_ he _resonated in her skeleton. Wasn't the own she had given John. And he wasn't hers – she didn't get to keep her John. Not if there was to be any John at all. He would kill_ him. _It had smashed into her like a final blow as_ he _fumbled, panting, still sneering, to do_ his _trousers back up – and that was how she had known it was true. Lies, pretences, nothing hurt like the truth. John would kill_ him _for what_ he _had done to her and they would hang him for it and that too would be her fault and then she would truly have lost everything. She could not let John sacrifice himself for her sake. She refused to be the instrument of his destruction Vera had tried to make herself…And this, just maybe, she could control. She must protect John. From the world. From the truth. From himself. From her disgrace. He couldn't know._

 _Trembling hands ripped free of the cuffs of_ his _phantom touch and the very real red marks that would soon bruise. Fingerprints on her body and on her mind. Purpose gave her enough power to clumsily tug the shreds of her garments down, as though in hiding what_ he _had done from her own eyes she could keep it from John. Or from the eyes of her mind and vicious memory._

 _There was blood under her nails._ His. _Hers, from where she had ripped her fingertips raw scrabbling ineffectually for purchase on a smooth table. Flora's… Scrubbing it out until her fingers protested and the water ran red anew with mingling blood. A stain that wouldn't ever go away-_

Anna bolted back to consciousness. The ache of exhaustion ran marrow-deep. Inside her head was pale-brown with tiredness even as the remnants of the nightmare plastered memorabilia scrapbook-like to the backs of her stingingly dry eyes. _Twist of pain in her abdomen, mockingly subtle swell of a stomach, blood caked under her fingernails_ where she had scratched her own legs in the merciless grip of sleep.

She was going to be sick. Again.

* * *

Anna sat in the tepid-cool bathwater, shaking with cold and fear and sheer tiredness. Her bare arms prickled with goose-bumps as droplets chilled on her skin in the night air; but the angry red patches on her stomach and legs were still hot and sore to the touch. At least the pain of scalding water was clean pain. It hadn't scoured away her sins and her filth, but it hurt enough to be a temporary distraction. Fingers ghosting over the burns didn't scare her as her own touch did some days – _his_ hands would never have trembled like hers were now.

Woozy and wobbly with the coldness in the pit of her stomach and the memory of the water's blistering heat, she lay half-slumped in the tub, distractedly nauseous but too empty to throw up anymore. Her face was stiff with dried tears but now she didn't feel like crying. She didn't feel like anything much – except sleeping and maybe never waking up. Drowning in two inches of lukewarm greyish water. But sleep brought only nightmares – monsters and worse.

When Anna was little she had been frightened of the monsters she thought lived under the bed – she'd pictured them something like the mill: heavy, lightning fast, belching smoke and lethal. Flora used to have to pick her up and carry her across the room, tucking all her limbs securely inside the blanket where they would be safe. Except they had never been safe and the monsters didn't live under the bed; they lived in her head, in her home and sometimes they won before she, mouse-like and stupid, even realised a game was being played. Because monsters didn't lurk in the shadows, they stood bold as brass in the light – it was those who didn't realise that quickly enough who were pushed into the shadows' inescapable grasp. And monsters weren't machinery or potent power. They were men. They didn't have to be lightning fast, only faster than you. Maybe they weren't lethally strong, but they were stronger than her. And, in the end, Flora hadn't been able to protect her from the monsters that lived outside her childish imagination, though she had kept them at bay for a while, with the fee of her own innocence, to preserve Anna's blind naivety... _Don't think about it._

But if she couldn't think about it now, in the in-between time when the world was asleep and the light in the bleakly tiled bathroom was dark but her head wouldn't set her free even in dreams and she woke to so smothering a feeling of being soiled that she had needed to try to burn herself clean, when could she ever look it in the mouth? Monsters were real and monsters were men. Ghosts haunted her but not enough to help. And she lived in the horror of the memories that masqueraded and twisted as nightmares. Him and _him_ and always her at their mercy because she was weak and she was blind and she made men think she wanted- _Too far. Don't think. Stop. Please stop._ Then always the memory that didn't fit into the clumsily assembled jigsaw of her past: Flora's blood staining Anna's childish hands, spilling over Flora's skimmed-milk skin and staining her nightie rucked up around her waist… _No. Didn't happen. So hard in her head; but didn't happen – not like that._

Stain on her own chemise – _'_ _it's badly marked' –_ Yellowing bruises, still stubbornly blue in places, fading, high up her wet legs but not gone even though it had been weeks since they were inflicted. Like the marks that lingered on her mind: plunging her back into the Boot Room, falling through water so it filled her nose and mouth, flooding her lungs so she had always the feeling of drowning and never the relief of death.

Mrs Hughes had asked if she couldn't start to move past it; but there was a fundamental flaw in her suggestion. She assumed it was in the past when the cruel fact was it defined Anna's present every day. Not only in the involuntary flinches she still couldn't suppress or even the shame and fear, but in her head and all around her every time she closed her eyes. It had happened so many times, she had lived it so many times, and it really was like going through it again and again – as real and as shattering as the first time. _He_ had violated her so many times in so many ways – her mind as much as her body, her marriage as much as her implicit, misplaced trust.

Her body shuddered with cold and Anna winced as the unexpected movement jolted her aching bones and sloshed rapidly cooling water into the hollow of her stomach. She had been in here for hours. Daisy would be along soon and find her, see her; or at least she would find a locked bathroom door with a box suspiciously shoved against it as an attempt at an extra line of defence. She had to get out; but the prospect of standing up, baring her body to the judgement of the night, the unforgiving scrutiny of the mirror, made her want to curl into a ball. She hadn't been able to remove her nightdress until she was submerged in water – soaking it in the convoluted process. She could reach for the towel from here but she still wouldn't be able to wrap it around herself until she was standing exposed.

She managed it, shakily forcing herself with tears running down her face – it seemed she did suddenly feel like crying again – and her stomach roiling. Huddled under the hugest towel she could find, on her hands and knees ineffectually struggling to clean up her own vomit [not for the first time that week], Anna tried to think of Flora engulfing her in a towel and tickling her dripping feet until she squealed; of splashing John mischievously from the bath - even though he was fully clothed and very much not supposed to be wet - until he was so sodden that it rendered his garments fairly pointless, which had of course been her ploy all along; kisses that tasted of bubbles. But the idea of having her arms held to her sides by a giant towel made her want to scream, and the thought of kissing John made panic coat her lips – and did she recoil more from the thought of the act itself or the reality that it elicited that kind of reaction in her?

She was a failure – as a woman and certainly as a wife. But she couldn't bear the thought of being touched; even the tendrils of damp hair curling down the back of her neck made her want to claw her way free of her stolen skin.

 _Ignore it. Hold on. Clean up. Get dressed. For John. For John. Pretend nothing's wrong…And look how well that's turning ou-For John._

* * *

John tried surreptitiously to watch her as she pushed the porridge around her bowl, smearing it up the sides in a fairly feeble attempt to make it look like she'd eaten something. He desperately didn't want to make her uncomfortable or upset her, but he needed to check that she was – if not alright, no worse. The night had been spent sleeplessly. He'd stared at the ceiling in the dark for about three hours, turning over Mrs Hughes' words compulsively in his mind, before realising that as he was the only person in the cottage – with the sheets next to him made-up and cold in her absence – there was no one to disturb and therefore no reason to lie there pointlessly, endlessly awake. So he'd spent the rest of the night pacing – having discarded at least four books and reread every letter Anna had written to him in prison so many times they were in danger of becoming illegibly creased – with the conversation in the housekeepers' sitting room still chasing itself endlessly across his thoughts. He was paying for his night-long musings this morning – bleary-eyed and with his leg complaining vociferously; but it was his chest that really hurt – the pain in his heart that had kept him from the release of sleep.

If John was tired it was nothing to how Anna looked. The bruising on her face had finally mostly gone down, but her eyes in her pinched, pale face were almost black anyway with the shadows of sleep-deprivation. She was beautiful. She was always beautiful. But she looked exhausted and ill and – lost, somehow. Was it his imagination that she looked smaller? Maybe in spending so little time together he had forgotten just how petite she was? It didn't seem very likely. No, Anna had definitely lost weight – enough that he could notice it even under the loose cut of her dress. The thought crushed the permanent weight of worry harder into his stomach.

Her eyes flickered up and he glanced quickly away so that she wouldn't feel like he had been scrutinising her; then looked slowly back so that she could make eye-contact if she wanted to. Maybe by accident, just for a second across the table she did, before tearing her eyes away almost immediately in panic. He kicked himself for the miscalculation. He couldn't bear her apparent fear- of him or of anything – and his own ongoing helplessness. Besides, John really needed Anna to be calm enough around him today to give him a chance to speak to her. Most of the night had been spent on miserable, useless introspection, but what he had got out of it was a sense of the need to let her know where he stood: to tell her he wasn't going to push anymore and make sure she knew that if and when and what she told him was entirely in her hands; but also try to find out whether there was anything at all he could do to make anything better, to help, to take some part of the invisible weight on himself. If Mrs Hughes was right, Anna needed him. The trouble was, he didn't know what she needed from him – and without knowing _why_ she needed him it was very difficult to guess. He wasn't going to ask anymore though. He had promised himself [and Anna, silently] that he wouldn't do anything that could possibly make this harder for her; he would trust in her judgement and in the fact that she would come to him, she would – she must, when she was ready. And he would make himself be alright with that. John fully intended to be there for her, just as he had vowed all those years ago in Kirbymoorside: _however whatever whenever._

Anna had finally given up on the congealing porridge – which he realised he himself had barely touched, preoccupied by watching her tense little movements – and stood up without a word to slip off upstairs, as she had done most days for the past months, in spite of the fact that Lady Mary hadn't rung yet. John stood up too. Fear flickered across Anna's face as he limped around the table -ignoring Thomas' snooping gaze and Daisy's quiet curiosity – and his stomach clenched. He continued regardless, following her into the hallway but stopping with a few feet of space left between them so she wouldn't feel cornered. She had halted too, resigned, but was looking at the wall to her right with her lips pressed tightly together. Every muscle in her body was held rigid – he could feel the tension seeping across the air between them.

"May I talk to you?" He asked cautiously.

"I have to get on-" she began. The excuse had obviously been on the tip of her tongue before he even began the question.

"Anna, please." John begged, his voice low and hoarse. "Please. I only want to talk for a minute." He implored her with his eyes and though she hadn't looked up he knew she would sense it on the side of her face. She didn't nod but she was standing still, no longer trying to hurry away. He took that as a good sign and just kept talking. He'd thought about the words all night but they came in a messy, clumsy rush and his voice was rough enough with emotion and intensity that had anybody passed them in the passage he would have been embarrassed. "I want you to know that you don't have to tell me anything you don't want to. I'm sorry I kept pushing you when I should have known that if you wanted me to know you would have told me. I'm sorry if I made anything worse. I won't anymore, I promise. I won't ask. I won't push. But if you want to, you can tell me anything – _anything_ – and I will be here, at your side, as you have always been at mine and I will never love you any less, no matter what might have happened. I love you, Anna, and whether or not you still love me, that's not about to change. I wanted to make sure you were in no doubt about that."

John paused for breath, his throat feeling tightly closed. He wasn't expecting a reply really, but the silence still sealed oppressively over his head. He pushed on, uncertain of how Anna was taking this but determined to get it all out and at least clear his side of the air solidifying between them. "I won't ask you what has happened again, but please tell me how to help you. I can't bear seeing you like this – what can I do to make it easier for you?"

He looked straight into Anna's face then, for the first time since he'd started pouring words, and was horrified to see the tracks of tears glimmering on her cheeks. "Anna? What have I said?"

She just shook her head wordlessly, her eyes closing and mouth twisting in a way that ripped at the tendons of his heart as she swallowed back the sound that would have accompanied her tears. She opened her mouth and then shook her head again – apparently unable to speak. Everything in John ached to close the distance stretched tight between them and wrap her in his arms, give her someone to cry into at the very least, even if he couldn't take away – or even know the cause of - her distress; but the second he did so he would lose her entirely – she would flinch away from him and the walls would slam back up…So he waited painfully for her to manage to find her voice. When she did, it wasn't an answer, wasn't anything he wanted to hear.

"I don't deserve you." Anna whispered, so low he had to strain to catch the words. And then she turned on her heel and walked slowly away from him, down the hall. John didn't know what to do. So he just stood there, not following her, not calling after her, counting her steps and trying not to join her in crying silently; totally nonplussed, because if there was one truth at the heart of John's relationship with Anna – other than _I love you and I would die for you and kill for you and do anything to protect you, anything to make you smile_ – it was that he did not deserve her, so that suggesting it could be the other way around was like telling him the world had begun to spin backwards.

* * *

"Mrs Hughes says you're going to America." He had meant to be the one to tell her – she shouldn't have heard it from someone else. Anna's voice was almost emotionless, without inflection. If it hadn't been so small, if there hadn't been a slight quiver, John would nearly have believed she didn't care. She was cleaning shoes again, brushing jerkily with her eyes averted even from his hand on the table next to hers. He had rested it there unconsciously and now wondered if he shouldn't have – was the proximity making her nervous? He didn't want to remove it though, in case the movement made her flinch…When had this become their life?

"I won't go." She looked up at him and he met her eyes, steady and fierce. "I'm not just going to leave you. Not now."

He was glad she didn't ask 'now that what?', though he had sensed the empty denial in the offing. Instead she replied, "I see. So you'll leave His Lordship in the lurch, and probably lose your job. And all this to help me."

 _I would do_ _anything_ _if I thought it would help you. Please just tell me how to help you._

"I don't want you to – I don't need you to. I'm fine." Anna swallowed and his hand twitched to take hers, to wrap his fingers around her little ones. "I'll be fine. I think we both need some space from each other. This might even be for the best." It was more than she had spoken in weeks and the words were stilted, forced. Where days ago they would have driven the spike of self-doubt deeper, now, in light of Mrs Hughes' certainty – _'_ _It's not true. Anna loves you very much…she needs you…' –_ and the strain in Anna's voice, John didn't believe the sincerity of what she said for a second. But, yet again, he didn't know what to do. How could he leave her, now, when she was so sad and scared? But if she wanted him to go, he would go in an instant. If he could believe for a second that she meant it – that what she needed was distance…Then again, did it matter if she meant it? She was saying it. And he had promised her he would listen to what she had to say, only do what she wanted. It had been mere days ago that he had vowed that to her. Although every fibre of John's being screamed at the idea of crossing the ocean until he was thousands of miles away from her, not being here if she needed him, he would respect what she told him; and it wasn't like he could really refuse Robert anyway. He would have done though, had Anna seemed to want him to…

"Go back to the cottage and pack." Anna forced her voice to hold, then laid the brush down and walked as calmly as she could from the room; not daring to look back and see how John was taking her cool words. She closed the door behind her, holding it together just long enough to be certain John wouldn't see her break.

She had barely had minutes to process the shock of what Mrs Hughes was anxiously telling her before John had come into the Boot Room. Now the truth settled in and knocked the air from her lungs like a blow to the stomach. Anna crumpled, almost doubling over as sobs suddenly seized her throat. It was the kind of crying that made it feel as though your whole body was made of tears and she leant, collapsed, really, against the support of the cold wall in an effort to at least remain upright. She pressed the back of her hand against her lips, which had parted with the force of her ragged exhales, to stifle the gasping sob she knew was coming: this was the weeping that took all your breath and forced it out on a crashing wave of tears, leaving your lungs aching for air which it dragged back in on a sharp, shallow cry.

John was going away. John was leaving her. She had finally done it. She had finally made him leave.

Some small, rational part of Anna knew that she was being ridiculous – that John was going away because Lord Grantham was, and only then because she had just insisted that he go. Her treacherous, near-hysterical mind didn't care, wasn't listening.

John was going away. That was good. He wouldn't keep being hurt by her forced coldness, the necessary distance she was putting between them. She wouldn't have to keep together quite such a perfect mask if it didn't have to withstand the scrutiny of the man who knew her best. This was what she had wanted. What they needed. _For John. For John. For John._

John was going away. He would be gone. He wouldn't be here for her to dread and long to see waiting patiently, insistently for her every single morning. He wouldn't be on the other side of the table at meals, watching her anxiously, making discomfort and love squirm in the pit of her stomach as she studiously refused to meet his gentle, worried eyes. He would be on the other side of the world.

When Mrs Hughes had come to tell her that Lord Grantham was going to America, the housekeeper had been armed with a solution: wanting to tell Lady Mary – what had happened – to get her to persuade her father to let John stay. It would work - Lady Mary would definitely have done exactly that and Lord Grantham would have bowed to his eldest's whim. Anna had rejected the well-meant plan instantly. She couldn't face the concern, the compassion her employer would have shown – not when it was her own fault this had happened. Not when she deserved what _he_ had done. She couldn't bear to have her shame laid before a woman she respected so much, who would never have let something like this happen to her. And she couldn't spoil Lord Gillingham for Lady Mary, not when the latter was so clearly flirting with the idea of letting him bring her out of the shadows of Mr Matthew's death. How could Anna cast a pall over that?

Moreover, she wouldn't tell Lady Mary without telling John. It wouldn't be right – she couldn't live with the deception spreading behind his back. Mrs Hughes was one thing – and was bad enough; she had only gone to her because she had been so desperate, had needed help so badly- _Don't think about it –_ telling her employer without telling her husband would be unforgivable. Besides, the more people who knew, the more chance there was of John finding out somehow. And then he would kill _him._ And he would hang. Because of her. And because of _him._ Anna refused to let that happen. She would let John go to America forever if it would keep him safe. Would let _him_ violate her over and over without a sound if only to protect John from his own fierce, reckless love.

It came back to _him_ and what _he_ had done. In the end, it all came back to _him._

* * *

Anna was silent. Not just quiet and subdued as she had been for weeks now, but totally silent. If she had looked miserable recently – and God knows she had – she looked downright wretched tonight: her hands shaking as she folded the evening dress she had just helped Mary remove, her eyes fixed on them, her lip being worried so relentlessly between her teeth that it had begun to bleed.

It made sense she would be upset that Bates had gone. That would explain why she was worse. It still didn't clarify why she was so cowed and jumpy all the time these days.

Mary had already attempted to engage her in several light conversations about nothing in the hope of distracting her or bringing her out of herself just slightly. Nothing had worked, she had received only non-verbal answers in the form of slight inclines of the head. The tension was building in the room as Anna diligently pushed on with her menial tasks. Mary had had quite enough discomfort at dinner - between her alleged 'aloofness', Mr Blake's downright rudeness and Evelyn's general awkwardness at any situation featuring hostility – oh and Edith's sour looks – it had been a thoroughly uncomfortable affair. The last thing she wanted was a continuation of that in her bedroom, where she had been accustomed to the relief of Anna's warmth and wisdom. And the crucial difference, that made tension between her and Anna so much worse, was that she didn't give a damn about Mr Blake – or even Edith and poor old Evelyn really – whereas she cared about Anna, maybe more than she had ever realised until she suspected something had hurt – was hurting – her friend.

Unable to take the sad, stiff silence any longer Mary burst out, "I wish you'd talk to me Anna!" That Anna tensed was not lost on her. "Because I want to help." She made a valiant, failed, effort to gentle her voice.

Anna's knuckles were gripping the bedframe where she had lain the dress.

"And I am so very grateful, milady. But I can't talk about it."

 _It – what was_ _it?_ She didn't want or need Anna's gratitude – she wanted her trust. "Not even to me?" _Don't we share a bond Anna? I thought we did. I trust you – I have trusted you, more than rightly, with so much. Don't you think I can be trusted the same way?_ Maybe that wasn't fair. Judging from that fact that Anna had not moved back to the cottage, she still hadn't told Bates either. If she wouldn't even tell her husband, how could Mary expect that she would tell her? But Lady Mary Crawley wasn't known for being fair. Or for giving up. "You've helped me in the past, God knows; and now I want to help you."

"I can't talk about it, milady; even to you." There were tears in Anna's voice. Mary recognised the way she was swallowing her words to keep them at bay from doing so herself when forced to engage in conversation in the months after Matthew's death. It was brimming on the brink of tears and refusing to let them spill until you were alone. It almost brought her to the edge of weeping herself – partly sympathetic sadness and partly sheer frustration, which had been able to make her cry more effectively than almost anything else since early childhood.

She wasn't a child now. She was going to find out what was wrong and she was going to fix it whether Anna wanted her to or not.

* * *

She had run out of white thread mid-hem. Neatly tying off her last stitch, Anna didn't even have enough cotton left over to necessitate snipping it off. There was none left in her button box either. She wished there had been – she didn't want to stop sewing; the basic task was so mind-numbingly easy, while also needing so much attention, that it nearly allowed her to turn her thoughts off entirely.

With an internal sigh, she stood. Miss Baxter, as a fellow ladies' maid was the most likely to have the exact reel she needed – and Miss Baxter was probably in the Servants' Hall at this time. Tea was supposed to be served any minute, Anna had just been choosing to ignore that fact in favour of completing unnecessary tasks to avoid both the proximity to people meals unavoidably included and the glaring emptiness of John's chair. She hurried in the hope of being able to slip away again without being roped into sitting down and joining the others.

Accordingly, she began speaking almost before she'd entered the room. "Miss Baxter, I wondered if you could-"

There was a man standing in front of her in the Servants' Hall. He turned to the sound of her voice and _his_ face, which had been twisted in laughter, hardened viciously as _he_ recognised her. Anna's vision tunnelled to a single blurring point of sheer, unadulterated terror. _He_ was back. _He_ was here. And John was not. She was alone with _him_ again _._


	6. Chapter 6

**Trigger Warnings: Green (as before, not a 'proper' trigger warning, but he is at Downton throughout this chapter), victim blaming, implied child [sexual] abuse, aftermath of rape, flashback to rape [not that explicit], survivor character is triggered, attempted sexual assault [doesn't escalate], pregnancy as a result of rape, traumatic mutism.**

 _A/N:_ _Thank you_ _to everyone who reviewed – I appreciate your feedback so, so much! This chapter is dedicated to Skeeter003 who is a wonderful beautiful person :) This chapter contains the most – 'action' seems like the wrong word; but quite a lot happens in this one. Just to clarify before it comes up, I am not misrepresenting selective mutism – what occurs here is not the same thing: it is [post-]traumatic mutism. I have done quite a lot of research and I hope I am portraying it correctly. As usual, if anyone knows anything more about it than I do, please let me know, call me out on anything you feel I get wrong… Please take the trigger warnings for this one seriously and look after yourselves. Again, if anyone would like/needs anything summarising so they can avoid a particular trigger or squick just let me know in a PM and I will be more than happy to send you a trigger-free version. Just to remind you, the nickname 'Angel Princess' has very kindly been leant to my fic by Kristen APA :) A massive thank you to my best friend who gave me loads of advice and help with writing some of the Green scene at the end. Also, the John pov scene is for Awesomegreentie, who asked for a glimpse of what he's thinking in America, and lemacd, who made an incredibly convincing case for John working out (at least sort of) what's happened. Please review!Xx_

 **Chapter 6 – The Sound of Silence**

 ** _Sometimes you scream in silence._**

Elsie closed the door hard behind her. The Boot Room was only dimly lit and maybe it was better that way – she wasn't sure she could actually look at Green's face clearly in daylight and let him live. It was possible Anna was worrying about the wrong person committing murder. Staring at the bastard sitting there unconcerned, in the room where It had happened – and it had been in here, though Anna had never confirmed as much, because Elsie had hastily shoved the shoes back herself later That Night, not knowing or caring where they were actually supposed to go, just trying to cover up the worst of the evidence, perpetuating the deception… - she felt more capable of killing the monster in front of her than she had ever imagined Mr Bates to be.

"They said you were in here." Her voice was forceful but steady. She was relieved that it didn't waver – she would have hated to give him the opportunity to misconstrue the fury, thrumming through her body and making her hands tremble, as fear.

He had been cleaning shoes when she entered but he placed them down on the table and stood to acknowledge her presence. The show of faux respect in the very place where he had – had done _that_ to her girl, her Anna, balled Elsie's shaking hands into fists.

"What can I do for you, Mrs Hughes?" There was pleasantry in the valet's voice but guarded wariness in his eyes; if she could taste her own anger it must be palpable. He didn't look concerned though, more like a contemplative predator assessing his next move; though it wasn't fair to compare him to an animal. Elsie was a farm girl and would never have insulted any creature with that parallel.

"Nothing." She spat the word, already hearing her brogue come through, as it only did these days when she was most emotional, rage bubbling up from the pit of her stomach onto the tip of her tongue. "You can do _nothing_ for me. Because I know who you are and I know what you've done."

He looked down and she would have loved to believe it was in shame or, better still, fear – to imagine that she could make him feel a tiny scrap of what must be going on inside Anna's head, little though she presumed to understand it, every time she couldn't even meet Elsie's eyes; but it was a dismissal, a disregard for what she was saying. Something more vicious than she had ever felt before flashed white hot inside her. "And while you're here, if you value your _life,_ " she put every scrap of her hatred into the syllable, determined he would hear the blatant threat, "I should stop playing the joker," _stop torturing my girl, stop acting like you have a right to be near her, or here, or even alive,_ "and keep to the shadows."

Green sat back down, picked up the shoe and resumed cleaning it, slow, deliberate, uncaring. When he spoke he trailed his eyes over her, arrogant and unbothered and she felt rather than saw her knuckles whiten in their clenched grip on her tenuously vibrating restraint.

"I'm afraid we were a bit drunk that night – Anna and I," her girl's name on his tongue made her want to rip it out of his sneering head. "So you're right. We were both to blame."

How dare he? How dare he! How dare this despicable excuse for a man sit there, in a room where he had committed a crime [but, more than that, an atrocity] - that she still couldn't give a word to, even mentally - against the gentlest, most trusting soul in the world, and smugly lie to the face of the woman who had found her - broken and bleeding from what he had done…And then to actually have the unbelievable audacity to blame Anna-!

Elsie took one incredulous breath through her nose in the hope it would calm her. It didn't. "No. Mr Green." Everything in her had expected to shout but her voice actually emerged as a harsh whisper. She sounded dangerous even to her own ears. He didn't even blink. He was still cleaning the shoe with exaggeratedly careful brushes, eyebrows raised sardonically. "You were to blame. And only you."

"Does Mr Bates know?"

She wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of an answer. There was no way she would tell him that Anna had kept his actions a secret – as though the shame were somehow her poor girl's and did not lie solely at his door.

She wasn't sure what he had written into her silence, but his lips curved into a smirk. "And where is Mr Bates, Mrs Hughes? Because he's not here. I noticed that as soon as I arrived. He's left." The word _her_ dangled unspoken in the air but it was obvious what he meant, not least from the satisfaction with which he said it.

There was a ringing in her ears and nausea twisted in her gut at the way he was smiling – _smiling –_ as he said it.

"Mr Bates is in America with His Lordship, though it's none of your damn business." His flash of mild surprise at her foul language made the curse taste sweet. "He hasn't left Downton," there was no point ignoring his implied meaning "and he certainly hasn't left Anna."

"He doesn't know then?"

Could she hurt the bastard enough to cause permanent damage? "It wouldn't make any difference if he did. You don't know Mr Bates," _and you'd better hope to God for your sake that you never do, because if he wants to kill you I won't be holding him back – I'll be helping_ "and," she added fiercely "you don't know Anna."

Green laughed at that, short and humourless, chilling even as it made her blood boil. She had never fully understood what the expression meant until that moment, standing there with blood thundering furiously under her skin to flush her cheeks with spots of scalding colour.

He didn't reply, merely kept brushing, not taking his eyes off her, a scathing leer of disbelief tugging at the corners of his mouth. He didn't reply, and yet somehow he had had the last word.

Elsie wanted to hurt him. Not just hit him, as she had been barely restraining herself from doing since he had walked into the Servants' Hall that afternoon, not even kill him, but _hurt_ him. She wanted him to be in half as much pain, to be half as scared as he had made her girl – to know what it was to feel helpless, to scream but have nobody come…because that must be what had happened and God how the thought had haunted Elsie these past months: Anna screaming for them – for her – and the only one to hear her the bastard who made her scream in the first place, who ignored her. She wanted to make Green pay so badly that the ferocity of it ached in her chest and itched in her hands. The darkness that had festered inside her all these weeks had suddenly vehemently reared its head. It was frightening: her potential, the unfamiliar desire, to destroy another human being…With a last glare that would have killed if it could, she turned on her heel and wrenched the door open, letting it slam behind her.

It wasn't until she had left the room and was trying to walk normally down the hallway even as she shook all over with anger and hatred, that it occurred to her that maybe she should have been frightened; shutting herself into a room – the room – with the man who had overpowered Anna, held her down and hurt her - only now did it strike Elsie that it had been a reckless – even stupid – thing to do. What if he'd tried to do the same to her? For all that she had barely been holding herself back from attacking him, would she have been strong enough to stop him if he'd -?

At the time there had been only rage – a red haze obscuring her vision and, apparently, her judgement – but, now the thought of what could have happened had occurred to her, belated fear tingled coldly through her bones and prickled her armpits. Involuntarily, she shuddered. Green was sickeningly malevolent and smugly unrepentant and, beyond that, there was a coiled danger to him - a threatening power - that now she knew to look for it was glaringly obvious; but even as unwanted visions of things she hadn't witnessed chased themselves through her mind and the reality of what had happened to her girl and what could have happened to her settled onto her chest, Elsie was glad of her own hot-headedness: glad to have stood there and made sure he knew that she knew what he had done, what he was. She had done it for Anna and she did not regret it one bit.

* * *

The chair and the clothes chest were both wedged between the narrow bed and the locked door, jamming it immovably shut – and Anna knew Mrs Hughes would have bolted the door to the Maids' Corridor too – but she still wasn't safe. _He_ was here. _He_ was here and there was nowhere that was safe from _him._

She hadn't been able to change into her nightgown. As soon as she had begun undoing the top button of her dress her breathing had hitched in her throat, becoming so rapid and shallow – _out of her control, and she couldn't draw in enough oxygen and the terror of that helplessness only made the panic worse_ \- that her vision jumped with a flash of darkness and she almost fainted. It was too much, she couldn't be that exposed, even fleetingly, tonight; couldn't remove the layers of pitiful protection and stand vulnerable in a bedroom that was on the same corridor as _his_ – not when she could feel _his_ hands all over her _yanking her hair, dragging her, throwing her against the table so that pain flared from rib to hip as the breath was forced from he_ r _body and her scream was little more than a gasp, ripping the front of her dress, striking a dizzying blow across her face when she fought - tried to cover herself, tearing her skirt as it was hiked up around her waist…Don't think about it!_

So Anna was huddled under the layers of covers, every blanket she had been able to get hold of heaped on top of her – layers of protection – curled into a ball, shaking uncontrollably. It was warm under the blankets (although the pit of her stomach, the marrow in her bones, still felt cold) but she was trembling like she was freezing. It had started as soon as she got the door of the bedroom shut behind her and crumbled, crumpling to the floor, her back pressing against the wood as though she would be strong enough to hold it closed. The rigid tension, that had been locked in her muscles all through speaking to Mrs Hughes: pretending she would be alright, pretending she could get through this, and then tending Lady Mary: not dropping her hairpins, not creasing the gossamer fragile dress by twisting it in her hands, had seeped away as soon as she was alone.

She had not been able to take her clothes off, but she had added a garment over the top: her knees drawn up to her chest under John's undershirt. It swamped her comfortingly and she took a deep, unsteady breath, desperately inhaling the lingering traces of his scent that clung to it: peppermint, pomade, books, shaving soap, tea left to steep for too long when she distracted him by playfully kissing his shoulder from behind and they ended up pressed together in the armchair taking it in turns to pepper each other's faces with with butterfly kisses that became less playful and more passionate by the second, and her.

Anna buried her face in the fabric - it was rough-soft against her cheek - engulfing herself in John. It was second-best to his arms, but at least it staved off the smell of _him –_ in the air, on the roof of her mouth, over every inch of her body. She had brought the shirt with her from the cottage on a whim of weakness – she couldn't not have anything at all of John's (she had the photo and slept with it under her pillow but that didn't _feel_ like John in the way this did) – but hadn't been able to bring herself to touch it until now _. She would contaminate it with her soiled hands, every inch of her was soiled; she would contaminate John_. But now he was safe in America – where she couldn't hurt him – and she couldn't _not_ touch it; couldn't bear having nothing of him to cling onto when he was thousands of miles away from her across the sea – safe from her – and she was alone.

Except she wasn't. _He_ was here.

What if _he_ came into her room during the night? Anna's breath caught, halfway up her throat, struggled, panicking, to get free, and then hurled itself from her mouth on a ragged sob of fear. She stifled the sound instantly, instinctively, pressing her face hard into the pillow, swallowing back her cries, locking them up inside her ribcage; remembering, playing it again. The Silent Game.

 _Tucked under the blankets, still wearing her clothes – because there was nothing else to wear, she had grown out of her nightie and it was too cold, too damp, to sleep in just a petticoat, Flora said – warmer body pressed against hers, stealing some of the heat with her chilled hands and feet, tiny compared to Flora's big ones. Giggling. "Shh, Anna. We're going to play the game again." "Silent Game?" "Yes, The Silent Game. Remember how?" "Lie really still like a cat and don't make any peeps when He comes in and don't stop until He's gone." "That's right, Angel Princess." "And I'll maybe win again because I always win. I'm good at Silent Game." "Yes, you are. Very good." Heavy footsteps outside the door, only His feet were that heavy. Flora went rigid beside her. "Start playing now." The Silent Game._

And He would come in and the giant shadow would fall over Anna's face and she would keep her lips and eyelids pressed shut but Flora would always shift and move and there would be a rush of cold air as she got up and dislodged the blankets, but Anna wouldn't open her eyes to see because she wanted to win; and at some point every night the pretending to be asleep would dissolve into actual dreams, and the next time she stirred the warm bulk of her big sister would be wrapped around her again – but smelling wrong. She remembered at the time thinking it was the smell of Night, and also remembered being physically sick when she worked out the truth years later. She wondered now why she had never asked Flora why she got up every time and lost The Silent Game – where she went. Hadn't she ever questioned it? She didn't remember. Maybe she hadn't – it had happened nearly every night, maybe it was so normal that it didn't occur to her oblivious seven-year-old self to challenge it…Would things have been different if she had?

It was always in the fuzzy halfway place between sleep and consciousness that Anna had realised Flora was back, and, reassured that all was right with the world so long as her sister was there, dropped effortlessly off again. It had only happened once – _twice-Don't think about it. Don't go there –_ that she had surfaced from vague dreams to find the spot beside her still cold and vacant. Still sleepy, she had struggled upright, scanning the shadowy room blearily.

Flora was standing alone at the grimy window, silhouetted against the night sky, her arms wrapped tightly around her own waist, straight backed and silent. Eight year-old Anna hadn't questioned her apparent desire to stare at the Manchester skyline – it was more interesting by night, prettier, when all the people were gone and the grime on the tightly-packed buildings and filth on the street was masked by the forgiving darkness – but she had been bothered by the fact that Flora was hugging herself. People weren't supposed to have to do that to themselves – hugs were what sisters were for. She padded across the bare floorboards, toes curling reflexively against the cold, to wrap her arms around her, butting an arm with her nose like Sooty sometimes did. Wordlessly, Flora had opened the self-embrace to encompass Anna, clinging to her very tightly for a long time, not speaking – like she was still playing The Silent Game. And Anna hadn't broken the silence because she didn't want to lose.

Shaking under the covers, curled as protectively – _not enough, would never be enough, hadn't been enough -_ in on herself as possible, the familiar weight of Flora heavier than usual on her heart and in the corners of her skull, the need to be with John, to have him near, so bad it ached to the core of her being, Anna hugged herself (hugging the memory of Flora and the scent of John) in an unsuccessful attempt to break free of The Silent Game and fall into actual sleep.

* * *

Was she alright? Was she asleep? No, she wouldn't be – there was a time difference, though he couldn't remember how many hours. Had she slept enough? At all? She had looked so perpetually exhausted recently, blue shadow smudged bruise-like under her eyes and weighing on his mind.

John himself was so tired he had gone past the point of being able to sleep. This was the fourth night of lying flat on his back staring unseeingly at the crack in the off-white ceiling trying not to think about Anna – or rather, trying to think about Anna in a way that was remotely helpful, rather than simply listening to the dull whine of worry that had filled his thoughts with the relentlessness of a particularly persistent mosquito for weeks. Being away from her, being unable to see her or check on her, had only made his confusion teeter more precariously on the edge of panic. At least when he was at Downton, helpless as he had felt, he had been able to subtly make sure she was – well, not alright, she clearly wasn't…but he had felt better knowing if anything happened – _like what, John? –_ he was at least there for her. _What, like you've been there for her recently – with no idea what's wrong? Like you've been there for her since she moved out of the cottage and can't even look at you?_

He had written three letters since arriving in America and, although he knew none of them would have arrived yet, he hoped Anna knew he was thinking about her, willing her to be safe and happy – though that didn't seem very likely; but maybe Mrs Hughes was wrong, maybe Anna would be better now he wasn't there – his presence had certainly seemed to make her nothing but miserable and frightened. He hoped she knew how much he loved her.

He hadn't asked in any of the letters what was wrong, what had happened; determined to keep his promise not to press, even though the questions burned in his brain; but, though he could barely admit it to himself, he was desperately hoping that she might feel more able to tell him, at least part of it, in writing. Though he doubted it.

For what must have been the millionth time, John wondered what could possibly have happened to cause such a change in Anna so suddenly. Initially, in the days following the concert [because that had been the night she'd changed - she'd gone down for the headache powder and when he next saw her she'd flinched from his touch, walked back without him], he'd thought she must be ill – though he hadn't really, hadn't believed it; illness didn't make people jumpy and skittish - She did say she'd fainted and she'd certainly looked unwell; but as the days turned into weeks and nothing seemed to change he had known there had to be more to it than that. For a while he'd miserably entertained the idea that Anna could have had a miscarriage. It would explain the perplexing ruined dress and her obvious distress, it might even explain how she seemed almost ashamed – guilty – as though she was blaming herself for something (though of course it was insane for her to think that she was responsible if something like that had happened – but he knew people sometimes blamed women when they lost babies, as though it were a failing on their part, as though it were anything but cruel misfortune)…but it didn't explain her fear and it didn't explain the silence. If Anna had miscarried she would have told him, he was certain; she would have needed – and, he hoped, wanted – him there to support her through it. But if not that, what? Something devastating had happened to her and it wasn't going away – it wasn't getting better. It was continuing to hurt her.

Had she been hurt by _someone_? He'd been looking, wracking his brain, for anything that could have spontaneously happened to upset her so badly; but what if it hadn't been random, what if she hadn't had an accident of some sort? Could Anna have been deliberately hurt? The mere idea of someone intentionally laying a finger on her twisted in his stomach…Who would ever harm someone like Anna?

There had been bruises. At the time, they'd been overshadowed in his mind by the baffling personality changes (the injuries were explained, her altered demeanour wasn't). But, thinking back to the night of the concert, when she'd come out of Mrs Hughes' sitting room, her face had been badly bruised, her lip bleeding…she'd said she fell – fainted – and hit her head on the sink, but what if she hadn't? She could have been lying – four months ago he'd barely have believed her capable of it, but there had been a lot of secrets and concealment since then. Was it possible that someone had put those bruises on Anna's face? The thought ripped rage from his heart and lungs and choked him with it – blinding rage at whoever had dared strike Anna – _Anna_ – but also a sharp self-hatred at the possibility that he'd failed to protect her, keep her safe…

But, who could have hurt her? She had gone downstairs to the kitchens for a powder, everyone else had been listening to Dame Nellie – except for perhaps a few of the gentlemen, who had been playing cards – and she couldn't have been alone for more than half an hour at most…And why wouldn't she tell him? If she'd been beaten – John wanted to be sick just thinking the words – she should certainly have seen a doctor, and she shouldn't have been at work the next day, and the bastard who'd done it should have been arrested – that was if John hadn't got his hands on them first.

He was still missing pieces, details, but he felt sickeningly sure that he was close to the truth now.

It explained everything. The flinching, the sadness, the fear – God, she must have been so frightened… _be_ _so frightened_ , his mind corrected him. Nothing had changed since that night: Anna was still upset, still scared; and now alone. John's chest felt tight, his jaw aching as tears threatened in the base of his throat. Was this what Mrs Hughes hadn't been willing to tell him – that Anna had been attacked, hurt, and was struggling by herself to manage it?… But why? Why? Why try to manage it alone? It always seemed to come back to this. No matter what explanation John came up with, there was no reason for Anna to keep silent about what was wrong. If she wasn't angry (and she had insisted, again and again, that she wasn't; and at first he hadn't believed her – he must have done something wrong – but increasingly he realised there must be more to it than that, so maybe it wasn't him) he couldn't understand why she wouldn't tell him. That was the missing piece. Her seeming shame – the self-blame: ' _I don't deserve you';_ she deserved far better but that hadn't been what she meant. Anna blamed herself for whatever had happened…and suddenly he wasn't sure it was as simple as he had thought. There was something still not falling into place about this. Why would Anna feel guilty if she had been the one hurt? Why would she try to keep it from him? He would have understood if she needed space, maybe didn't want to be touched when it had so recently brought her pain, he would have respected that – done anything he could to make her comfortable. Surely Anna must know that. So why hide that she'd been attacked – if in fact she had…

Unless-

No. John cut that line of thought off there immediately, pushed the hauntingly dead eyes of the Boer women he'd seen in the camps in South Africa back into the part of his memories where he simply did not go. No. Anna would definitely have told him if- if anything like _that_ had happened. She would.

Wouldn't she?

* * *

Jimmy had been speaking to her but she couldn't hear him anymore. The room had gone silent – Anna couldn't hear any of the conversations that must be taking place around her. Her senses had narrowed to two: sight and smell. She had accidentally glanced up from the untouched plate where she had fixed her eyes at the beginning of the meal, and got stuck. _He_ had caught her again – she couldn't look away from _his_ unconcerned face, transfixed and frozen. _He_ wasn't even looking at her but she was as trapped by _his_ eyes as she had been by _his_ crushing grip on her wrists, _his_ knee pinning her legs helplessly apart, _his_ weight on her breaking body – _Stop! Don't think about it._ She couldn't let her mind go there now, not with _him_ opposite her, not in front of everyone. She would shatter irrevocably and _he_ would know _he_ had won.

 _His_ eyes were brown. So were John's. There had never been eyes less similar. John's brown was often serious, always intense, but deep and warm and safe. His eyes could flash with anger, could well with sorrow, could look back at her resigned and just a little empty - Anna had seen them do all of those things – but he had never looked at her with anything but a base tone of unwavering love; whether he was lit up laughing with her or blazing with passion or she was trying to imprint him on her memory forever – as though she could forget – when they had believed they were saying their last goodbyes, his eyes glowed with a devotion she had never had a chance to doubt. Even when sad eyes were saying a confused, miserable goodbye to her as he left for America, John had still looked at her with love.

 _His_ eyes - _her eyelids slammed shut as though she could escape that way_ _–_ _as though if she couldn't see it it wasn't happening, as she had believed as a tiny child, as Flora had always fought to make sure she believed – the beautiful lie her childhood was based on…She was an adult – even more helpless than she had been at eleven – and shutting her eyes wouldn't make anything go away._ His _breath was still hot and foul on her skin whether she could see_ his _face or not and terrified shock burst behind her closed eyelids, forcing them apart, as her own screams rattled in her teeth and she fought viciously but her knickers tore. She was shaking so badly that her desperate attempts to move out from under_ him _were totally useless, even as her scrabbling knocked more shoes, another tin of polish, to the floor. Anna's eyes were open now. And they met_ his _-_

She could smell _him_ and she didn't even know whether it was real or the memory of it – all around her, coating her skin like slick blood that wouldn't wash off. The stain of _him_ all over her. Making her _his._

"Anna?" she jumped at Jimmy's voice and tore her eyes away from _him._

"Sorry, yes? What were you saying?" she asked distractedly, trying not to visibly cringe from the fact that he was sitting next to her – _so close, too close, please don't, please_ – trying to behave as much like a normal person as possible. Failing. He was looking between her and _him_ curiously and Anna kicked herself for being so obvious; the last thing she needed was for anyone else to start asking questions. It would be so much easier to put the jagged pieces together with _him_ here.

Jimmy didn't repeat whatever she had tuned out, listening instead to a conversation that Miss Baxter had started on the opposite side of the table. "I wasn't working here then," the other ladies' maid was saying. "It's a pity, because I admire Nellie Melba." The bottom dropped out of Anna's churning stomach even as her heart dropped into it, lurching her pulse into her ears. "I'd have loved to hear her sing."

 _A high-note of opera mingling and rising into Anna's first terrified, disbelieving scream-_ it was how she woke from so many of the nightmares, with that shrill sound ringing in her ears, though in fact she couldn't hear the music upstairs through the green baize door. And they couldn't hear her.

"You must be joking."

Her hands were shaking so badly that her cutlery clinked against the plate. She put it down, almost dropping it in the process.

"Why?" Daisy asked innocently, and Anna involuntarily opened her mouth, then slammed it shut again, biting her tongue until she drew blood. _Don't talk to_ him _Daisy. Don't give_ him _any reason to notice you._ Near hysterical panic clawed its way into her chest on the younger woman's behalf. "I thought she had a beautiful voice." _'_ _I think Dame Nellie has a lovely voice.'_

"Beautiful? Screaming and screeching as if her finger was caught in the door?" _'_ _Like a cat on a bonfire.'_ "I swear I couldn't take it for one more moment." _He_ was laughing. His _sneering laughter as she lay there, the rags of her dress and her chemise still hiked up around her waist..._

Jimmy and Mr Moleseley sniggered at the comparison. Anna flinched – unable to keep looking at _him._ Unable to look away.

"So what did you do?" Miss Baxter asked quietly.

She froze up totally, her mind shutting down as well as her muscles. This couldn't be happening. This couldn't possibly be being casually discussed over dinner.

"Well, I came down here for a bit of peace and quiet, that's what."

 _Being offered 'something stronger' – the smell of whiskey on_ his _breath when_ he _blocked her way. Thinking_ he _was just being silly – a bit of flattering but harmless one-sided flirtation taken too far_. ' _You look like you could use some real fun. Is that what you want?'-No! Stop! Don't think about it. You can't think about it now._

She glanced across the table at Mrs Hughes, who seemed to have gone white with anger, her face set but her eyes flashing, and thanked God that John wasn't here to hear this.

Anna wanted nothing more than to flee the room – needed to get away from _him,_ from the flippant discussion of _That Night –_ but it would be impossible to do so in a way that didn't arouse the others' suspicion. Besides, she wouldn't give _him_ the satisfaction. _He_ must already know the power _he_ had over her; the most she could do to fight now – as though it wasn't too late for that - was refuse to break in front of _him_ again. She dug the nails of her right hand, resting on her lap, hard into her left wrist. The nails were uneven where she had cut them down to the quick only the other night and the action left a row of smarting red crescents on her pale skin.

"Ooh, is that more of the cauliflower cheese?" the change of subject threw Anna off and as _he_ leant across the table to reach for the spoon – she would not flinch – the toe of _his_ shoe brushed her ankle. _His_ eyes met hers as she recoiled from the contact with a silent gasp of terror and revulsion, mocking and arrogant. It had been deliberate. _He_ was _playing_ with her. _He_ knew exactly how much power _he_ had over her; playing with her helplessness like _he_ was testing how far he could push her silence – _Don't react. Don't let anyone know. For John. For John. For John._

 _He_ smirked at her. To anyone watching it would have looked friendly.

She mustn't be sick.

* * *

 _He_ cornered her on the stairs a few hours later. Blocked her way with _his_ body. It was the sickest déjà vu imaginable.

"Let me by." Her voice was tremulous and brittle and _high –_ much higher than her normal voice. She didn't know why she had even tried to make it strong. It wasn't like _he_ would listen to her.

"We both know that's not going to happen." The smirk, the malicious teasing, was gone. _His_ eyes were dangerous. "Have you missed me, Mrs Bates? I've missed you – missed the _fun_ we had together."

She tried to curl her body away from _him,_ a pathetically hopeless attempt to protect herself. She was clutching the banister so hard her fingers almost snapped with the force of her grip. Someone must come. It was the middle of the working day; they couldn't possibly be the only ones here. Someone would come. This couldn't be happening. It wasn't happening.

"Have you realised what you were missing, Mrs Bates?" Why did _he_ keep saying her name? It was like _he_ was mocking her marital status. It was true, she didn't deserve the title anymore – not since what _he'd_ done. She shouldn't be tainting John's name. "I can give you a reminder if you want."

She stumbled clumsily backwards, trying to get away from _him_ but catching her foot on the stairs in the process. _He_ grabbed her waist, almost as though to stop her tripping.

 _He_ was touching her. _His_ hands were on her body, instantly bruising. Anna tried to scream but her voice lodged, caged, at the base of her throat. Her lungs knotted themselves around her heart getting tangled in her ribs and pulling them in so that her chest was compressed. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't see.

Only _his_ eyes. Hard and merciless, the pupils blown wide. _Him_ being in control was terrifying, _him_ losing control-

 _His_ eyes widened and _he_ stopped forcing her against the wall. A cold smile spread slowly over his face as _his_ hands pressed hard onto her stomach – _he_ was touching her through three layers of fabric but for the way _his_ touch burned her skin like a brand the clothes may as well have not been there at all. "Well, Mrs Bates. In the family way?" _He_ ran a slow finger over the subtle swell of her abdomen. She couldn't move. "When can I expect to congratulate you?" The smile stretched. "You and your husband must be so thrilled." _His_ hand moved lower. Her voice ripped free of the grip of her paralysis and she screamed. It emerged as more of a strangled cry. But it was loud.

There was a clatter of footsteps overhead and the smile twisted into a snarl and then back in the same instant. _He_ settled his hands onto her waist again, as if _he_ was steadying her.

From deep underwater, Anna could half-hear _him_ telling Thomas that she'd taken a funny turn but _he'd_ stopped her falling and could Thomas take over and made sure Mrs Bates was alright because Lord Gillingham had rung for _him_? _He_ let go of her abruptly and she swayed dangerously, unable to regain her balance, but Thomas' hand quickly steadied her shoulder. She didn't flinch from the touch, barely feeling it.

* * *

"Anna?" Thomas asked again. She still didn't reply; she didn't even seem to hear him. The ladies' maid was unsteady on her feet, her eyes unfocused. It was beginning to scare him a little. Tentatively, he shifted his grip from her shoulder to her elbow and took the other one in his hand too, attempting to gently guide her down into a sitting position so that if she fainted – and that looked like it might happen any second – she wouldn't fall and hurt herself. That was his medical training kicking in. He lowered himself onto the stair next to her, keeping one hand under her elbow to support her.

"Anna?" he tried for a third time. "Are you ill? Do you need me to get someone? Mrs Hughes, or Dr Clarkson-?"

Her eyes finally focused on his face as she registered what he was saying. Mutely she shook her head. Thomas realised she was trembling. Bewildered and now quite worried he asked, "What happened? Did you black out? Mr Gillingham said you nearly fell." She flinched hard at that. "Are you still feeling dizzy?" Another silent shake of her head. He couldn't tell whether she was lying – and why wasn't she speaking?

He'd heard her cry out but hadn't recognised the voice as hers, only registering that it was a woman. She hadn't sounded like herself – maybe just because he'd never heard Anna scream. Thomas wasn't sure what he'd expected to find when he responded instinctively to the sound of distress, but it wasn't Anna Bates shaking and silent on the stairs. He was increasingly regretting getting involved in this – whatever it was – but, at the same time, his curiosity was now piqued. And his concern.

Anna abruptly pulled her arm out of his grip and drew it into her lap, cradling her stomach with both hands. "Do you feel sick?" he pressed, a little irritated, a little anxious.

This time she didn't even reply. The shaking was getting worse and her face was very pale. It reminded him of soldiers who were brought in in terrible pain – or ended up being put through terrible pain during emergency operations; it reminded him of trying to bathe Edward's gas-blinded eyes, hating himself for the necessary agony he was inflicting…Edward - _Don't go there. Not today._ But he recognised these symptoms. Anna was going into shock.

"Shit." He muttered under his breath. He couldn't leave her but he needed to get help. Anna was only slight - he could lift her if he needed to, but he wasn't sure how she'd react to that and she didn't seem to be present enough for him to ask her. Given she'd just cringed away from his touch he didn't really want to risk it.

The Abbey – especially downstairs – was always obnoxiously full of people. You couldn't get a moment away from them usually. Where was everyone when you needed them? _Where's bloody Mr Bates when you need him, eh?_ Thomas thought wryly.

"Daisy!" He yelled. Anna jumped and he shot her an apologetic glance.

The kitchen maid – under-cook, queen of the kitchen, whatever her official title was these days – appeared in the hallway. Scowling at him, probably for calling her like a dog – though Mrs Patmore did the same all the time - with some measure of confusion, probably because he was sat on the stairs, she demanded, "What?"

"Can you get Mrs Hughes?"

"Why can't you get her yourself?" She retorted sullenly. He liked her better before this recent discovery of her backbone.

"Just do it." He snapped; then, realising Mrs Hughes was unlikely to come at his request without an explanation, he added "Tell her Anna's been taken ill on the stairs."

Daisy looked at him curiously, but eventually did as asked.

* * *

 _'_ _In the family way.'_

No. She couldn't be. She would know. There would have been signs, clues…

Vomiting on her hands and knees, six, seven times a night. Being forced to rush to the bathroom during the day to throw up again. Feeling acutely nauseous although her stomach was empty. Her breasts tender to the touch even after the tracks of his nails, initially beaded with blood, had faded to thin pale scars. The slight swell of her stomach in the last couple of weeks, as though she were gaining weight in spite of the fact she was barely eating. Her ankles protesting; her back aching. The absence of her monthly cycle…

No. She couldn't be. It had been her cycle the week of the house party and her and John hadn't made love since then-

 _Not John's baby._

No.

No. It couldn't be. She couldn't be pregnant and it couldn't be _his._

It explained everything she hadn't let herself think about.

No. It wasn't fair.

Since when had her life ever been fair?

 _No_.

But when had her 'no's ever mattered?


End file.
